


Slither and Stitch

by DenebolaRigel



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: 6918 - Freeform, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Attempted Murder, Blood, Body Horror, Buddhism, Character Study, Creepy, D18 - Freeform, Dark Comedy, Depressing, DinoHiba, Dubious Ethics, Dubious Morality, Evil Versus Evil, Extremely Dubious Consent, Guro, Hate Sex, Horror, Illusions, Implied Gokudera Hayato/Shitt P., Love Triangles, M/M, Near Death, Non-Canonical Violence, Non-Consensual Bondage, One-Sided Attraction, One-sided Implied Gokudera Hayato/Yamamoto Takeshi, Parasites, Pathos, Porn With Plot, Possession, Post-Canon, Psychological Drama, Psychopaths In Love, Puppets, Rape, Revenge, Snakes, Spiders, Torture, Trust Issues, Unrequited Love, evil dolls
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-03
Updated: 2016-07-22
Packaged: 2018-05-04 17:17:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 17
Words: 83,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5342111
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DenebolaRigel/pseuds/DenebolaRigel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Saturday 22/11: Partly cloudy in the morning with more clouds for later in the day. High 18. Winds light and variable.</i><br/><i>Saturday Night: Cloudy with fog early, giving way to showers overnight. Low -1. Chance of rain 80%. Rain may freeze late in the night.</i><br/><i>Sunday: Mostly clear skies. Cold. High 10. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 km/h. Frost advisory early.</i><br/>Hibari Kyouya, now a senior in high school, sours over the dissolution of his first relationship. Perhaps "relationship" is a bit of a stretch for sex in the school showers and fighting pretty much anywhere else. Nonetheless, the disruption of his routine, and the loss of his now second-favorite method of stress-relief after fighting, leaves his feathers ruffled and his impulse control in the red—just the way Mukuro loves him. What won't he do to see more of his precious prefect grasping for his composure? Rape him? Curse him?<br/>Spirit away students under his watch and blame it on a shadowy nemesis?<br/>The rest of Vongola can only hope their Mist guardian is just that corrupt. Good men run when a demon tells the truth.</p><p>*(constructive) CRITIQUE WELCOME!*</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pursuit Predation

**Author's Note:**

> Any more and this summary will fill up with spoilers fast. Suffice it to say, Mukuro focuses his attention on Hibari but everyone else is involved (plot-wise, not romantically). Definitely not my first fanfic, but it is my latest, longest-running, and the only one I felt was coherent enough to put online. I'll keep adding installments periodically until I catch up to where I stopped, but after that updates might get sporadic because I'm approaching PhD candidacy.
> 
> Stuff to note before/while reading:  
> [1] The prologue details a previous fanfic I was working on shortly before and partly during the creation of this one, but I got bored with it and became uninterested in the pairing as some of the characters were flanderized in canon. So I just wrote up everything that was in my head on it and tacked it to the front of this one. No, I don't intend to post what I have unless it's specifically requested by someone who doesn't mind it remaining unfinished.
> 
> [2] This work mixes English and Japanese colloquialisms, idioms, puns, and double-entendres. The ones that are unique to Japanese or that are English but mean something else relevant in Japanese are noted with a parenthetical (*T/N) for "translation note." T/N's will also be used for the odd Italian slang. One of these days I'll go back and move all the T/N's into endnotes. BUT IT IS NOT THIS DAY!
> 
> [3] Notes on the summary/teaser: The kanji for 10 usually has an On reading of "ju", but occasionally it's also read as "ji". "Ji" is also what you would get if you wrote "Di" in kana and then romanized it. Also, the last sentence is a very loose homage to the quote "Demons run when a good man goes to war" a la Dr. Who (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Good_Man_Goes_to_War)
> 
> [4] The Dino/Hibari/Mukuro tag refers to competition, not a threesome.

**Prologue:**

_(Optional Prequel - tl;dr Hibari and Gokudera fell into a rocky, on-again-off-again fuck-buddy relationship for about a year and half, and then Gokudera left for Shitt P.)_

This story begins with the remnants of a strange and halting relationship that started about a year and 9 months prior, in February. Reborn had paired off all of his students for extra training, pitting Gokudera against Hibari, a few months before that. For Valentine’s Day, I-Pin mad chocolates for Hibari with Bianchi’s aid, but confused his locker number with Gokudera’s. To make matters worse, Gokudera ate one before noticing Hibari was named the recipient. Ultimately they both discovered the hard way that Bianchi’s “help” had tainted the chocolates with a potent aphrodisiac. A very awkward, intoxicated tryst ensued, helped along by Hibari’s relative sexual naivety, leaving Gokudera guilt-ridden and Hibari perversely intrigued.

With another try resulting from Gokudera’s attempt to apologize, Hibari determined he’d taken a liking to sex and pressured Gokudera to continue doing it with him on a regular basis. Though fearing retribution from the law, the Catholic Church, and Tsunayoshi most of all, Gokudera caved to keep the peace and hopefully, keep the incident under wraps. Moreover, right or not, his cultural background convinced him that despite the coercion, playing the male role meant he had the better end of the deal. Tsuna and the others found out anyway shortly thereafter, but Hibari’s blasé attitude and Gokudera’s complicity provisionally placated them.

About 6 weeks later, an elaborate explosive attack on ally Dino en route to Tsuna’s house drew Gokudera and Hibari out to the scene of the crime, whereupon a chase after a suspicious older woman of Slavic descent ensued. Just when it looked like Hibari caught her, she grievously wounded him with her storm flame’s ability to leave explosive handprints, and kidnapped Gokudera on pain of finishing Hibari off. Before leaving she revealed her target—Gokudera’s Systema CAI—which Hibari transmitted to Tsuna and Yamamoto on the way to the hospital’s OR, along with her codename, Grenadier.

The following day, as Tsuna convened his remaining _famiglia_ and (sort of) allies to discuss the situation, Squalo barged in with a warning about the Russian mob and, once everyone was on the same page, revealed that Grenadier was not alone. While unable to give any details about the two accomplices other than that one was a Filipino woman and the other was a veteran swordsman masquerading as a Russian Orthodox priest, he dropped a big bombshell with Grenadier: she was Xanxus’s deranged mother, and as Xanxus wanted no part in his mother’s crimes or death, Varia was sidelined. Initially they suspected she was acting alone since a direct attack on Vongola was diplomatic suicide for Russia. Thus, the possibility also emerged that if the 2 accomplices were not merely loyal subordinates, they may be there on behalf of the Russian mob to discreetly make off with the fruits of her labor while crucifying her as a delusional rogue in public to maintain a façade of diplomacy. Squalo left them with as many new questions as answers, but Dr. Shamal and the Kokuyou gang offered their services to help track Gokudera down.

Some days later, Rokudo Mukuro and Chrome met Hibari and Dino in the hospital. Dino’s lung trauma ruled him out of the fight altogether, but Hibari’s injuries were more peripheral and easier to mend. So Mukuro offered Hibari a deal: the 2 illusionists would bring Ryohei in to help him mend and use their illusions to fix whatever Ryohei couldn’t; then he and Ryohei would be their living shields. Hibari wrestled with his antisocial impulses for several days, but ultimately took the deal to repay his debt to Gokudera.

In the meantime, while investigating a Russian seminary across town, Shamal’s mosquitoes detected traces of ammonium nitrate and aluminium on the church floor—someone was tracking in explosive residue. Tsuna and Chrome snuck in, pretending to be students, and made contact with one of Grenadier’s colleagues, a saber-wielding septuagenarian assassin named Gerasim Yermolayev who hid his profession behind the mantle of the priesthood. Though they narrowly escaped with their lives after botching negotiations with him, they figured out where the 3 assassins were holding Gokudera and began plotting a 3-pronged infiltration plan.

First, Ken and Chikusa performed reconnaissance around the extremely under-utilized but not quite abandoned engineering building, capturing the security personnel to make way for Mukuro to replace them all with his illusions. Then Tsuna, Yamamoto, and Ryohei snuck in through a back-alley loading dock while Hibari and Chrome convened with Mukuro at the front door. The plan was for Tsuna’s group to draw Grenadier out and hopefully away from Gokudera’s ad hoc prison while Hibari and Chrome broke Gokudera out, but things went both according to plan and…not. Grenadier found Tsuna’s group first and their battle ensued, but Grenadier was never Gokudera’s warden. Mukuro, Chrome, and Hibari found Gokudera, but in the process the two boys stumbled straight into the trap of a rather buxom 40-something Filipino woman whose enormous aura of rain affinity filled the halls with a sea of her namesake, nearly-invisible Irukandji jellyfish. Chrome, whose training had mainly involved firearms, tried to shoot her down from a distance, but the woman’s flames slowed and broke up the bullets like real water, so Mukuro sent her to find Tsuna’s group where her sniping skills would be more helpful. Arguably it was also to shield her from the following lopsided battle which saw the two boys poisoned repeatedly by the ever-multiplying jellyfish and, in agony from the poison, slashed many times with her twin karambit blades. Yet during the fight they learned she considers the Russian mob her sworn enemy. Her father sold her to them as a sex slave to pay a debt, and she trained herself as an assassin in their ranks to take revenge on the slave traders from within. Moreover, she regards Grenadier as a sort of Marian figure, even calling her “mama,” and remains with the mob in part to protect her until she believes herself strong enough to extract Grenadier from the mob’s clutches. As the boys lay bloodied and in agony from the poison, Mukuro questioned why she hadn’t already acted as her Irukandji trap is practically invincible. After several minutes’ consideration, she miraculously decided the time was right to fetch Grenadier, released Gokudera, and sauntered off with a smile.

Mukuro was effectively out of commission because his flank was ripped open and it took all his illusion power to keep the wound clean and sealed. Gerasim had stabbed Gokudera in the foot during his confinement and treated the injury halfheartedly, so it took longer than the rest of the skirmish to limp to the battleground with Mukuro on his back. Hibari however, dead set on getting back at Grenadier, followed his ears to find the explosive fight between her and Tsuna’s group. He found them stalemated in a situation resembling trench warfare, with Chrome on her knees shooting, Tsuna defending from the air, Ryohei trying to mend shrapnel damage that Yamamoto took when Grenadier blew up one of his swords, and Yamamoto’s swallow familiar fighting a losing battle with Grenadier’s lynx familiar. Realizing he was not much better equipped to fight her head-on than Mukuro, Hibari drew on the strategic experience he got training with Gokudera. He hid behind the doorway and sent his hedgehog familiar to collapse the room behind Grenadier, forcing her to turn around and back into his line of sight. That part went as planned, but when he launched the bladed chain from the end of his tonfa to cut her Achilles tendons while she was distracted, well, she wasn’t distracted enough. She dodged and hurled shrapnel set to explode at Hibari. Tsuna dove in front of Hibari, countering most of the volatile projectiles with his flames, but he caught one small bomb in the ribs and dropped out of the air. With his position given away, Tsuna on the floor next to him struggling to breathe and now indebted to 2 people, Hibari’s launched himself into close-quarters combat with Grenadier with reckless abandon. Yamamoto took over covering Chrome while Ryohei stabilized Tsuna and then leapt into the battle himself. However, just as they were finally starting to beat Grenadier back, the stress of the Irukandji poison on Hibari’s pulmonary system sent him into cardiac arrest mid-attack. Ryohei brought down the rest of the ceiling for cover just as Irukandji arrived.

As soon as Grenadier dug herself out, Irukandji encouraged her to stop fighting on behalf of a mob they need no longer be beholden to. They got into a passionate argument, Irukandji begging her “mama” to let it go because she can do better than the likes of mob men, and Grenadier insisting on her long-held delusion that Timoteo would take her and Xanxus back if only she could bring him power that surpassed the 10th’s _famiglia_. While they were distracted, Ryohei loaded his fist with healing flame and punched Hibari in the chest, reviving him but only just. He and Chrome reloaded their guns and debated whether or when to shoot, but Gerasim beat them to the punch. He walked in on Irukandji’s treasonous entreaties and drew his saber. Irukandji dared him to try and stop her. He threw his sword with lightning speed, impaling Grenadier through the eye and killing her instantly. As Irukandji gaped, he told her that they had what they came for and that the “rogue” Grenadier need not remain to tempt Irukandji to abandon her missions. Irukandji tried to retaliate, but Gerasim, picked up by his giant condor familiar, fled too fast for Irukandji’s flames to reach him.

Irukandji, after a long silence, turned to Tsuna’s _famiglia_ and told them that this was why they needed to get out of the mafia while they were still young and unemployed. They demanded the antidote for her poison, to which she could only reply “time and fluids.” Hibari struggled to ask what she would do now that Grenadier had paid the price for Irukandji’s treason. Irukandji answered as she departed that her next mission would be her last, that Gerasim mistook her will to bide her time for the will to live, and that this was the price of lying in wait thinking she’d ever be powerful enough to take on the entire mob and escape with her life. Finally, Gokudera limped into the wreckage carrying Mukuro piggyback style. Once Ryohei took Mukuro off Gokudera’s hand, he and Hibari shared a rare hug just before the Irukandji poison once again sent Hibari into shock. Eventually, the whole group wound up in the hospital in spite of Ryohei’s interventions.

The several weeks it took for the lingering effects of the Irukandji poison to wear off brought Hibari and Gokudera relatively close (at least by Hibari’s standards); so close in fact that they decided to try a few dates together. Some were more successful than others, but essentially the more they tried to find other activities they both enjoyed besides sex, the more they realized their libidos and dislikes were about the only things they had in common. The most fun they ever had together outside the bedroom was a time when they walked out of a late night B-movie, happened upon an illegal fight club, and cleaned house. Even at the tender age of 17, they understood sex and fighting were no basis for a deep and lasting relationship. Nonetheless they could never quite get away from each other so long as each knew the other had no better partner in mind. Hibari in particular, a creature of habit, held the leash tight for his own convenience, or so he said. No one could really tell if he meant it exactly as he said or if he legitimately soured at the thought of Gokudera with anyone but him; par for the course with Hibari.

Either way, when a certain pink-haired, balloon-festooned enigma of a girl with a habit of dressing like a paint factory puked on her returned from Europe and once again captured the eye of his ¼-Italian partner, Hibari found himself quietly seething for reasons he didn’t fully understand and didn’t particularly want to figure out…

 

*          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *

 

The day was Saturday: the day for even the teachers to say “screw this” and cut out early, for the shopaholics to laugh all the way to the mall, for the gamers to shuffle away caressing their pet consoles, for the nerds to linger and study and steal each other’s glasses, for the prefects to round up the nerds for various forms of harassment (possibly also stealing glasses), for the jocks to dust their sweaty off-white uniforms in the red clay of the baseball field while a couple of dirty boys played ball in their showers… Or so the pattern went on and off until the past few weeks. This Saturday a nerdy, noxious, part-Italian guy and some unworldly, vaguely feminine creature swathed in balloons had commandeered the field to launch a hobby rocket. This wasn’t actually ruining the day for anyone from the baseball club—no meet due to coach’s absence today—but it did rather irritate a certain prefect, namely half of the showers’ ball club. You see, the other member was out on the diamond, launching his rocket for somebody else. And that wasn’t likely to reverse itself.

Game over.

“Well, this is unusual.” A certain very friendly jock took to the field, baseball bat bagged and bobbing up and down on his back, and loosened cedar-green tie blowing in the wind.

“Not a step closer if you wanna keep your face,” the shorter boy, with a properly-cinched tie and a mane of shaggy jet hair eating away at three sides of his face, thrust out an arm baring a tonfa at his approaching younger peer.

“Ha-ha, oh, I know better. I’m staying right here,” the tall one grinned sheepishly and mimicked his senpai’s pose, hooking fingers high onto the chain link fence to the south side of the outfield and hanging like nothing in the world could stop his fall if he let go. In a way, gripping the sun-warmed links felt good against the wind-chilled skin of their exposed hands. Even the straight-laced prefect seemed to find their heat worth their potential to mark up his cinereous uniform blazer, with the school’s crest embroidered in silver thread on the breast pocket.

“… _Ne_ , Hibari, do they know you’re watching?” The taller boy’s big, naïve, tea-colored eyes guided his face toward the standoffish prefect about 10 paces to his right. His ducktail bangs, wide-open school blazer, and jet black pants fluttered noisily in the breeze against the brushed nickel links. The prefect’s steely eyes, which always appeared to belong on the face of a sleepy cat, wedged themselves in their left corners, glaring at his _kohai_. And it wasn’t just for the happy-go-lucky-jock’s ongoing neglect for proper use of honorifics.

“I doubt it… Who cares?”

“You sure look like you do.” The shorter one uttered a low growl at the suggestion. “Well, it’s not really a secret. You guys broke up, right?”

“We were never together. It was just sex until one of us found something better to do.”

“Well…maybe it’s for the best for both of you?”

“…?” Curiously convolved puzzlement and dissatisfaction clouded the prefect’s face.

“I’m kinda surprised you guys were on-and-off for, what, a year and a half? Together you just seemed kinda…toxic. If you don’t mind me saying it, I think you guys were a bit too similar in intensity. I mean, Gokudera hasn’t been as relaxed in months as he’s been the past couple weeks.”

“Wow, an unwanted opinion and an accusation of being a bad influence on your friend in one fell swoop? That’s pretty ballsy for you, **Yamamoto** **Takeshi** ,” Venomous derision dripped from name as it rolled off Hibari’s tongue. Unluckily for him, Yamamoto was just the sort of incorrigibly positive guy that fell into the 1% of the school who could keep control of their bowels while being harangued by this irate gorilla compacted into the shape of a young man.

“ _Ma_ , _ma_ , sorry; I didn’t mean it like that. I’m just saying…I think you’ll also feel relieved to be out of that relationship once you get used to the idea. And at least now you have a better idea of what you want in a partner, right?”

“Now you’re accusing me of naivety?” Hibari’s face pulled tight in a sneer of disbelief. He sprung the barbs on his tonfa as a warning. This, Yamamoto had learned to ignore over the years. Not that he thought Hibari was all talk—on the contrary, by this point a fight was typically inevitable no matter how much longer Hibari waited to take the first swing. But Yamamoto also knew that as long as he stayed strictly on the defensive, Hibari would typically let up as soon as he blew off enough steam or got bored. Key to dealing with him was frustrating his provocations while providing him an outlet to vent. Oh, so many times he tried to teach Gokudera and Gokudera still always played right into Hibari’s impulses, feeding him, enabling him like a drug dealer, and leaving both of them feeling pretty discouraged afterward.

“Well, everybody needs time to learn the rules and strategies of the dating game. I’ve only been in 3 relationships so I’m still learning, too. But I thought what little I knew might help, so…”

“Didn’t your mum ever teach you that the last thing anybody wants when they’re irritated is unsolicited advice?”

“No, sorry,” Yamamoto smiled meekly. “My mom died of breast cancer when I was 6. We thought it was just bad luck that her mom died young, but then she died, and then—remember that time I tried to kill myself because I broke my arm? That was 2 weeks after my aunt died. All 3 of ‘em died the same way. Nobody ever detected it fast enough.”

Hibari opened his mouth, drew a blank, clammed up, and awkwardly stowed his tonfa. After a long pause he finally added, “…Didn’t know that.”

“That’s OK. I haven’t told very many people. Reminds me too much of how selfish and short-sighted I was then.”

“I wasn’t apologizing.”

“Hmm…” mildly taken aback, the jock wordlessly turned back toward his best buddy in identical disheveled uniform out on the field, watching him unroll the remote detonation charge cord to a safe distance while the hovering girl-thing buoyed up by translucent, pink, crisscrossing inner-tubes positioned the charge at the bottom of the rocket. Her lilac bangs (the only remains of hair not coiled up in a few dozen Bantu knots) hung dangerously close to the charge as the hem of her grey and teal plaid skirt (the only difference between her uniform and the boys’ besides the substitute of a viridian bow in place of a tie) slipped dangerously close to uncovering her undergarments. “Well…they seem to be having fun.”

“Gokudera always said he was straight…but the way every other girl he interacted with pissed him off, I never believed him. I thought if he left me for anyone it’d be for that mop-headed squirrel you herbivores all fawn over.”

“…‘He left you’…Never mind, I’m gonna get hit if I say it, right?” Hibari furrowed his brows as if to say ‘don’t go there again,’ but ultimately changed the subject.

“…I almost feel sorry for the girl. If he’s her first date, her first kiss is gonna taste like ashtray,” Hibari briefly flashed a sadistic smirk.

“Ha-ha-ha, I can’t believe you said that out loud!”

“Like I give a fuck… What was her name again? Shit-Piss?”

“Ah… No, it’s Shittopi-chan. No offense but…you seem pretty jealous.”

“You’re on thin ice, Yamamoto.”

“ _Ma_ , sorry… I’m just worried about you. I don’t know if it feels any worse if you’ve had sex, but like I said, I’ve been dumped a couple times too, so I think I know how you feel.”

“We. Weren’t. Dating. What even is your excuse? Feeling sorry for me? I didn’t ask for your pity.”

“Well, you know; you’ve saved me—saved everybody, really—a few times and you’re kind of, what’s the Italian word, ‘ _famiglia’_? That’s reason enough to wanna help, right?”

“I had my own reasons. Don’t feel so special—” At the tail end of chastising Yamamoto, the half-meter rocket ignited and spiraled into the air with a tremendous, crackling hiss of sparks to cheers and high fives between the nerdy couple crouched about 20 meters southeast of the platform. “—Shit, I thought that was a water rocket!”

“Did you see where it went? I don’t wanna get hit.”

Hibari squinted up into the sky, and after 2-3 second, pointed, “…There, the red thing; it’s gonna land in the road.” _Good. Hope a truck hits it,_ he thought. “Anyway, I gotta bite some people dead.”

“Na, Hibari-san, don’t kill them! Midterms are coming up!” Yamamoto wavered in indecision. It was never a good sign when Hibari decided to take one of his blowing-off-steam fights to someone other than the person who (accidentally or otherwise) provoked him, but any attempt to divert him back to the instigator usually resulted in more property damage. Eventually he convinced himself not to intervene, as Gokudera was perfectly able to hold his own, especially with Shittopi-chan’s help. The situation would just take longer to resolve since Gokudera would habitually try to get on the offensive and they’d feed off each other’s aggression until they wore each other out. So it was with their former sex lives, so it was in combat.

“I’m not making any guarantees…” Hibari started jogging away with tonfa in each hand. But he stopped short. “Oy.”

“…What?”

“Does your family restaurant serve Mongolian barbeque?”

“Oh, yeah; it’s not our specialty but it’s pretty good. And it’s cheaper than the sushi.”

“That’ll be dinner then.”

“Huh?”

 

“I can’t believe you actually came… I’m, uh, flattered! I think…” Yamamoto trailed off, scratching the side of his head with the butt of a sushi knife and sweating under the searing glare of his sempai sitting at the bar, despite tying a towel around his head and rolling up the sleeves of his chef’s uniform. Hibari looked significantly more pissed off now than several hours earlier, not to mention tired and, thanks to the winter wind, a little flushed in the nose.

“I hope you’re as good at cooking meat as you are at hacking it.”

“Ah…well, it’s nice to know you trust me with your food. So, uh, what do you want to drink?”

Hibari calmly flipped over the menu and scanned the list. “Oolong tea, and make it strong,” he replied at last.

“Should I go ahead and put in your order of Mongolian Barbeque?”

“Yeah.”

“How do you want it, mild, medium, or hot?”

“Medium.”

“Got it.” As Yamamoto scurried to the back, Hibari momentarily imagined him with dog ears and a tail and sniggered under his breath. But his brief respite in humor quickly faded as he tired of staving off oblivious sushi bar customers, carnivorous girls, and aspiring raconteurs. His face contorted as if he’d caught a whiff of rancid broccoli when he noticed the sign saying that happy hour would in fact continue for the next 2 hours. Yamamoto returned with his tea to find he had up-ended the stools to either side of him.

“…What are you looking at?”

“Social as ever, I see,” Yamamoto chuckled nervously.

“Can I have my tea now?”

“Ah! Yeah, sorry; oh, and I need to make some _nigiri_ here so you’ll have to put up with me for a few minutes, okay?”

“Whatever…”

Several minutes of silence passed with Yamamoto deftly slivering salmon, tuna, whitefish, and mackerel into fingerling strips so symmetrical and perfect, they almost sparkled on the chopping block. Actually, they did sparkle, with fish oil. Hibari sipped his tea facing off to one side with a veneer of apathy, but every few tens of seconds he stole an admiring (and a bit hungry) glance out of the side of his eye at Yamamoto’s slicing motions. Yamamoto didn’t exactly pretend not to notice, but figured he’d get a beating if he called him out; so he picked a different topic.

“I, uh…I heard there’s a nasty cold front coming through late tonight, early tomorrow morning. They said the rain might start freezing around 3 or 4 in the morning.”

“Freezing rain in November?”

“Yup. And 5 days after that the high is supposed to hit 28.”

“Huh. Fucking climate change,” Hibari muttered and turned his attention to the TV playing softly over the drink bar.

“Ha-ha…” Yamamoto chuckled nervously, paused, and scratched his chin, resigning his weather conversation to the “dud” pile and groping for another subject. “… _Oya_ , Hibari?”

“What now?”

“Have you ever thought about dating Adelheid- _sempai_?” The look Hibari returned, after nearly choking on his tea, suggested Yamamoto may as well have tried to hook him up with his pet canary. “Ha-ha, I’ll…take that look as a ‘no’… But you have to admit, she has a nice figure.”

“I guess… Her rack is a freakin’ melee weapon.”

“Ha-ha-ha, what’s with that?”

“By the way, if this is your way of trying to get my mind off of what happened between Gokudera and me, you’re doing a piss-poor job.”

“Sorry, I’m just curious; I mean, you’ve only ever been in that kind of relationship with him, and that was kind of circumstantial. Just wanted to know your tastes, you know?” With one stroke per piece and nary downward glance, he slapped on a thin smear of wasabi on what would soon be the underside of each sliver, and then pressed the fish into ovals of rice at a rate of about one every 10-15 seconds. Continuing despite Hibari’s evil eye, “Have you seen any girls you find attractive?”

“No.” Hibari murmured irritably.

Yamamoto lined up 3 wooden trays and put 8 rolls on each board, 2 of each kind of fish, and without missing a beat asked, “Why not? The curves don’t do anything for you? Or—oh, is it because they group up a lot?” Only then did he look down to arrange a floret of pickled ginger atop a pair of plum leaves on each board.

“You’re gonna keep bugging me until I answer, aren’t you?”

“Probably,” Yamamoto grinned sheepishly.

Hibari sighed heavily, “Girls are a different animal with a different concept of territory and different needs. Their survival strategy annoys me, but for most of them it makes sense. I have nothing to do with them as long as they don’t take a swing at me.”

“Hang on while I deliver these,” Yamamoto made a “stop” motion with his hand and then carried the trays to several students at the other end of the bar. For the minute or so that took, Hibari’s growling stomach filled in as a conversation partner. “…OK, I’m back. So does that mean you could still like a girl if she’s a loner?”

“No, I—ugh,” the surly sempai groaned in exasperation, “I hardly looked at the one guy I slept with. The one sure thing at this point is that I like dick. And the guy I get it from better be able to hold his own against me one-on-one.”

“That’s 2 things.”

“Yamamoto,” Hibari put his tea down and leaned in on one elbow, eyeing him peevishly, “You’re perceptive occasionally, but you’re not the sharpest knife in the drawer.”

“Aw, man… hey, what do think of me? _Ne_?”

“Didn’t I just say you’re not very bright?”

“I mean in terms of attractiveness. Guys like you have different tastes in men than girls, right?”

“‘Guys like me,’ huh? Why do you care? Aren’t you straight?”

“I’m just curious! I mean I’ve heard of some really strange ones who like big fat hairy guys, so—”

Hibari slammed his fist on the table. “I’m starving. You’re a moron. This conversation is over.”

“Eh-heh…sorry, that was pretty tactless, I guess.” Yamamoto ducked through the short blue curtains concealing the main kitchen and poked his head out one last time after checking the clock in the back. “Your dinner should be out in about 5 minutes.”

“Cool.”

As if that were a jinx, a familiar and despised chill danced partway up his spine. A pair of hands clad in black leather gloves and jutting from the ash-colored Kokuyou High _gakuran_ uniform flipped the stool to Hibari’s right. The heterochromic eyes he loathed more than anything else on this good Earth met his. Rokudo Mukuro.

“Good evening, Hibari-chan,” Mukuro grinned ingenuously.

“Get the fuck out, I’m in a really foul mood today,” Hibari glowered but did not look at Mukuro a second time. Mukuro pouted.

“Aw, that’s too bad, yo, I was hoping for a little cheering up myself.”

“Don’t bother sharing. Are you looking for a fight or not?”

“Ku-fu-fu-fu, maybe later…” Mukuro made a dramatic show of pondering the invite, “Actually…after dinner. Sure, let’s do it.”

Hibari cracked a vindictive smirk. “Best news I’ve heard all day.”

“What was the worst? Getting dumped?” Mukuro jabbed whilst smiling like the Cheshire cat. “Ka-ha-ha-ha! Oh, I crack me up.”

Hibari flinched, but his expression didn’t change. Instead, he calmly slid his tea to his left, stared into space, and dropped his arm to his side for a few seconds, snaring Mukuro’s attention with his aberrant inaction. Once confident that Mukuro’s childishly curious gaze clung to his profile, he grabbed Mukuro’s head by the signature tuft on its crown and slammed his face nose-first into the high-top counter. Mukuro lifted his head sputtering blood and cursing in several languages.

“COCKING HELL, OW! _Figlio di troia!_ (T/N: Italian for ‘Son of a bitch’) … Damn that hurt…” Mukuro grabbed a wad of napkins from a dispenser at the end of the bar and stuffed them up under his bleeding nose. “You never change, do you? Fu-fu… Bastard. **Oh** yeah, we’re gonna have it out after dinner alright.”

“Hibari-san, food’s up—holy crap, Mukuro!” Yamamoto stared for a moment, and in a few hesitant, jerky motions, set Hibari’s plate down in front of him and backed away slowly. “Please don’t fight in here; it’s bad for business, OK?”

“We’re taking it outside as soon as I’m done eating,” Hibari said emphatically.

Noticing Mukuro staring at Hibari’s food, Yamamoto thought he’d offer, “Do you…wanna order anything, Mukuro?”

“Yeah, I wanna, but,” Mukuro sighed heavily and shrugged, palms open, “I got no money, yo.”

“Ha-ha, well, then…sorry, all I can offer for free is water and a mint,” Yamamoto shrugged sheepishly.

“You’re as heartless as he is,” Mukuro complained melodramatically.

Hibari rolled his eyes. “Why in hell are you here if you’re broke?”

“Ku-fu-fu, I heard you broke up with the storm guardian and came to check up on you. Didn’t want you to be lonely, ya know?”

“How did you know I’d be here, and why the **fuck** does everybody know about Gokudera and me calling it quits?!” Hibari demanded rhetorically, slamming his glass of tea back on the tabletop.

“Everybody knows? Oh, it’s not like anybody told me. I’ve just been stalking you a little. It’s a hobby of mine. It should reassure you that I was at least a couple weeks behind thhe curve. Any-hoo, I just like to make sure you don’t go soft on me because you got yourself a fuck buddy. And now that that’s taken care of…”

“…I can kill you and you’ll stay dead?”

“Ku-fu… Oh, no, I’ll never stay dead. I have too much to do to fix these 6 god-forsaken realms, especially this one. Say, I don’t wanna fight you on an empty stomach. Spare a few bites?” Mukuro slipped off a glove and reached for Hibari’s food. Quick as a flash, without even a twitch of his face, Hibari snapped his chopsticks together and stabbed Mukuro’s hand through and through. “GYAAAH!!” As quickly as he punctured his beleaguerer’s hand, Hibari withdrew, sucked the blood clean off his chopsticks, and continued eating as if nothing was amiss. Meanwhile, Mukuro nursed his hand with a slightly glistening eye. “ _Cazzo!_ (T/N: Italian for ‘Fuck’)…Ayah…!”

“Hibari, no!” Yamamoto yelled in a tizzy, rushing over from the other end of the bar against the current of patrons skittishly scooting the other direction on the opposite side of the bar top. “Don’t do that, please? You scare all our customers away! I don’t wanna have to chase you guys out, OK?”

“You think monetary threats will work?” The punkish freak’s inquisitive face suggested Yamamoto’s idea was either incredibly novel or incredibly stupid. In any case, he gave it a try. “You know, I could sue you for this hole in my hand.”

Hibari tucked the partially-masticated morsel of meat in one cheek just long enough to state rhetorically, “I thought you were broke. Plus, you know, you’ve tried to murder me at least twice already.” He swallowed. “Just snack on an illusion. Then I’ll swing by your dumpy hideout and bite you to death. With any luck, you’ll land back in the Realm of Hungry Ghosts.”

“Smartass. Then, Rain Boy and his dad could sue you for damages.”

“Hmm… A little lawsuit’s never stopped me before, since this whole city is my territory. But… unlike you there are a few things to this guy I can actually respect somewhat…oy, Yamamoto-kun, what’s the cheapest food item on the menu?”

“Uh…edamame appetizer…?” he knew he should’ve been grateful but somehow Yamamoto couldn’t keep the deer-in-the-headlights look off of his face. Mukuro of course delighted in the awkward turn.

“Ku-fu-fu, what’s this? Your affair with the Storm rained out so now you have the hots for Rain Boy?”

One of Hibari’s lower eyelids twitched, but rather than lash out again, his face and voice simply flattened. “…Cancel that order. I’m not giving into that shit.”

“You’re too cruel, yo…” sulkily Mukuro turned away and let his eyes drift toward Yamamoto’s hands, which were back at work carving up sashimi. “Ah, Yamamoto-kun, you’re bleeding on your fish.”

“Wha—oh, crap!” Yamamoto spotted a bead of blood on his index finger and a couple more on the slab of whitefish he was carving up. Instinctively he lapped up the blood only to discover a) there was no cut, b) he’d violated one of the principle rules of chef’s etiquette: there can be no contact between the food and anything that goes in or comes out of the chef’s mouth. “Aw, man… I ruined this whole fillet. And I can’t even find the cut.”

“Make Mukuro eat it,” Hibari recommended half in jest.

Mukuro slapped his hands together and a glaringly bright smile overtook his face. “Excellent idea, Hibari-chan, I knew you cared! I’ll take it to go, please!”

The prefect’s head fell into his palm. “You planned that, didn’t you?”

“More or less,” Mukuro grinned with a shrug.

“Yamamoto, since he bled on your fish, can I shake him down here? Or do I even have to do that outside?”

“ _Ma_ , it’s fine, I know where his place is. I’ll just swing by tomorrow and…he can…pay me then?” It was hard to tell if Yamamoto’s shoulders were rising to meet his jaw line or if his neck was trying to retract itself like a turtle’s.

“…You both make me sad,” Hibari muttered, massaging his forehead with his thumb and index finger. “Check.”


	2. Heads, I win; tails, you lose

About an hour later in the wasted theater lobby of the old Kokuyou Healthy Land, the 6-eyed maniac with raggedly-parted blue hair postured against the flighty but heavy-handed prefect, drawing circles in the years of dried mud, dust, and frass. After licking the last of his sullied fish fillet off his fingers, Mukuro held up a spit-shined digit and posed a recommendation. “ _Na_ , Hibari, I have a proposal to make, since you so graciously helped me procure my dinner. I can tell you’re more testy than usual, and I’m assuming in all seriousness that it’s at least partially sexual frustration, so…how about a putting a prize on the line for this battle? Winner fucks loser—that simple.”

“Hmm…” A voracious leer crossed the prefect’s face. “I like the sound of this… But there’s one condition I’d like to impose. I wanna see the strength of your body and your skill with a weapon. So if you have to use my _sakura-kura_ to save your sorry ass, the deal’s off. Got it?”

“You refuse to acknowledge my illusion powers as a valid feat of strength?” Mukuro’s flippant grin suddenly soured with disdain. “I never figured you to be such a coward.”

“I didn’t say not to use illusions. I just said _sakura_ specifically are a cop-out. _Sakura-kura_ was Shamal-sensei’s win, not yours. If you really want your victory to mean something, beat me at my own game.”

It was Mukuro’s turn to have a twitchy lower eyelid. “Very well, I’ll accept your terms. Come.” As if his words pulled the plug on some drain in the middle of their reality, the room before Hibari began to stretch into a spiral. It wasn’t long before the room had formed a corkscrew between the two, and it continued to twist.

At least, that’s what Mukuro intended Hibari to see. But Hibari hardly seemed to notice. Rather, he simply flickered out of sight. In the blink of an eye, Hibari was on top of him. Tonfa met trident in a terrific crash, and then Hibari vanished again.

“Ho, you’ve gotten a lot fast—OOF!” The next impact Mukuro felt was to his kidneys, from the back. He stumbled forward. Once again, Hibari was ready and waiting; he brushed aside the handle of Mukuro’s trident, sprung the spike in the tip of his tonfa, and dug into the pit of Mukuro’s stomach. “… _porco_ … _dio_ …*” Blood oozed from his mouth and his full bodyweight sank down onto Hibari’s arm. Hibari dumped him off, kicked the body across the room, and snapped his head to and fro, staring guardedly into every nook and cranny. (*T/N: literally “pig god” but used figuratively like “oh, fuck”)

“I know that didn’t kill you, cockroach. Where are you?” Hibari bayed into the darkness.

“Right here…” To Hibari’s mild surprise, the body of Mukuro he just impaled stood up, brushed itself off, and lunged for him full bore. Hibari couldn’t help but chortle to himself.

“Oh, c’mon, we both know you’re not Spade.” Emphasis on the mutually loathed name, Hibari kicked one leg out, dropped the bladed chains from the ends of both tonfa, and whirled around at high speed, entangling 2 copies of the 6-eyed demon, the one coming head on, and another 120° to his posterior left. “Thought so.” He gave the one behind him an uppercut focused into a spike and cracked his head against the head of the one before him. The one behind him dissolved.

“Fuck, man, you’re actually trying to kill me, aren’t you?” Mukuro grimaced, rubbing his forehead.

Hibari looked taken-aback. “It’s only fitting for all the hell you’ve put me through.”

“I thought you wanted to fuck me.”

“Skull-fuck your corpse, maybe; the point is, you’ll be dead.” Hibari’s face contorted into a sublimely maleficent grin. “By the way, who said anything about a time out? Roll—vacuum sphere form.” Mukuro momentarily donned a perplexed frown that quickly turned to wide-eyed horror as a mousy squeak issued from his hair. That spot then rustled and rapidly belched forth billows of turbid stormy-purple clouds riddled with spikes, completely engulfing Mukuro in a matter of seconds. “I’ll enjoy listening to you suffocate.”

“All right, I give,” Mukuro’s muffled voice leaked out.

“There’s no giving up. You’re gonna die in there.”

Something like a sigh oozed out of the smog. “It looks like the only way I can beat you is fighting dirty after all…” Hibari rolled his eyes and squatted down to wait for the _sakura_ to appear, mentally preparing himself so he wouldn’t lose control of Roll for the few minutes that he’d be physically incapacitated.

_Here it comes again…_

But the _sakura_ never came, and no form of preparation in his arsenal could ready him for what happened next. Rather than the swimming head and numbing body with the scent of _sakura_ he awaited, a slithering swarm of innumerable tiny eldritch abortions of naturestirred synchronously in every muscle, vessel, and cavity in his body. They squirmed and writhed and burrowed between his muscle fibers and made his skin visibly crawl with horrid bruise-colored rippling veins, extracting perversely sensuous grunts from their host. Reflexively he gasped and clutched at his body to quell the wriggling masses, but that merely sent the hive-mind into panic. They wove themselves into every sinew large enough to squeeze into and gummed up his muscles like engine sludge. He immediately dropped to the floor, paralyzed and wheezing, desperately trying to force his diaphragm to flex against the invading gelatinous hoards lodged in the cavities to either side of it.

_HOLYSHITBALLSAAAGHFUCK what the hell’s going on under my skin am I infected worms what, parasites?_

_Agh they’re in my muscles in my bones my guts my lungs my eyes aaahhh fuck fucker can’t hold on Roll—Roll it’s strangling me get them out—_

The airtight needle-sphere around Mukuro evaporated and he emerged slightly shaken and breathless, but otherwise as cheery as ever. “Phew…fu-fu…fu… You don’t know how long I’ve been searching for someone special enough to use this on.” With a snap of his fingers, Hibari’s respiratory system threw off its fetters and greedily drank in the air.

“*Gasp*…*gasp*…What…what did you do to me now?!” Hibari hoarsely demanded.

“Well, it’s not _sakura_ , so…I’ll be making good on that deal now,” Mukuro grinned. “Let’s put it this way: you dug your own grave when you stabbed me in the hand and ate my blood off your chopsticks. Oh yes, that was entirely planned…OK, it was planned to the extent that I’d provoke you until you made me bleed and then I’d slip it to you, but hey. You took care of the hard part for me. Anyway, your body is now infested with my blood-snakes. Thanks for being so easy to lead on!”

_Blood snakes, what the  fuck?_

_He tricked me into fighting  a battle he’d rigged?!_

“You unbelievable bastard…this whole skirmish was a farce!”

“Ku-fu-fu, indeed it was. But I really, _really_ wanted to have you, yo. You see, lately I’ve come to notice you’re growing into a truly… gorgeous specimen,” Mukuro mused longingly, kneeling down and stroking the side of Hibari’s face. “To be honest, I’ve found your ruthlessness alluring since the day you and Sawada first took me down, and it’s only ever grown since…right along with that… timeless, marble-cut beauty of yours…” he breathed huskily and licked the glistening corners of his mouth. “And now that Gokudera’s out of the way, I’d like you to consider me.”

“You’re out of your goddamn mind if you think I’d willingly—”

“No, no, I didn’t figure you’d go willingly. I know you’re the conservative type, but sometimes you gotta try new things, yo. I’ve got 6 worlds of experience, so I can tell you haven’t been touched nearly enough lately.” As if to punctuate his dubious observation, the beast in a high school beauty’s clothing slipped his free hand into the prefect’s dark pewter jacket and stroked his captive from collarbone to fingertips, peeling off the outer garment. He then inhaled deeply from its still-warm collar before tucking it under his arm. “Think of it as an early Christmas present. I even sent Chrome and the others away so you wouldn’t have to feel embarrassed. Aren’t I nice? Give me a chance, hmm?” Mukuro waggled his fingers over Hibari’s body, and the serpentine parasites wriggled back, sending Hibari into a shuddering fit. “Besides, you agreed to fight me of your own free will, right? For you that’s practically a date, isn’t it? Ku-fu-fu…listen, yo, denial is poison to the body. I’ve learned over my many lives that people who are addicted to battle are addicted to pain and the rush it brings out as the body tries to cope. Admit it, you know you seek me out, and you know why.”

“Nngah! …Huh…nh! Kill…Kill the damn snakes!” Hibari breathed raggedly. “…Feels gross…!”

“Hmm…hmm…” Mukuro feigned deep thought, “I’ll make it stop if you suck me off. And I mean really deep-throat me, yo. It doesn’t count if you just lick the tip. In that vein, this,” he melodramatically tore off Hibari’s spruce-colored tie, “should probably go,” and he flung it over his shoulder. Hibari screwed up his face in repugnance at the thought; even more so when Mukuro climbed onto his abdomen and let the hot, damp contents of his unzipped fly flop onto his white shirt. But the pulsating coils tightening around his tendons were becoming unbearable. Mukuro grabbed Hibari’s head by the hair and pulled him upright. The detainee started to open his mouth, thinking to himself,

_Go ahead. Put that overrated cock  of yours right in here. I’ll bite it clean off._

“On second thought…” Mukuro paused with his mostly-hardened shaft a few centimeters from Hibari’s mouth. Hibari snapped his mouth shut and waited, eying the duplicitous monster distrustfully. Somewhat lower in his field of vision, Mukuro was lining his penis up with Hibari’s…left eye?

“What the hell are you aiming for…?” Hibari asked pointedly. But his subjugator responded with only an impossibly broad grin reminding him of the fabled slit-mouthed woman.

And then he slammed his prick straight into his captive’s eye socket.

_OOOWWWWW-SHIT-OH-SHIT-OH-SHI—_

“NNGYUGH!” Hibari strangled a howl of agony unlike anything short of his dealings with Grenadier and Irukandji about 10 months prior. He felt his vitals plunge with the blood cascading over his cheek. As if unsatisfied with the current deluge, Mukuro began to thrust, juicing more eyeball fluids and blood from the aching socket. “RGH—! AH-HNGH! NNGHH—!” Three thrusts into the torturous romp and the shock had already shorted out Hibari’s lungs. He blacked out—

—and immediately jolted awake back in the same position as before but in a different room, splayed over a big spread of grungy old futons in the corner of a room dripping with tatters of tacky trappings and moth-eaten curtains—evidently the remains of one of the gutted theaters. Mukuro straddled his trunk, fly open, staring down at him inquisitively as he unbuttoned his shirt. Cold sweat glistened on his forehead.

“Goodness, I’ve barely even started and you’re already hallucinating in fear?”

_Dream…a dream…it was a dream an illusion …?!_

“*Gasp* …*gasp*…hah…huh…*gulp* hh…” Hibari gasped at the sweet, presently painless air filling his lungs. “…What the fuck was that?!”

“What was what?”

“Don’t shit me, you showed me an illusion of you fucking me in the eye socket!”

“Ku-fu-fu-fu… You like? That’s the power of the blood snakes. Whether you know it’s an illusion or not, you will see what I want you to see, feel what I want you to feel, and move whatever parts of your body I want in any way I please at any time. I bought your body right out from under you. And now I get to make it dance.” Mukuro poked him playfully in the nose. “Come, now, we both know you’re as much into S&M as me. So…let’s get these clothes off and start with a little bondage, shall we?” True to his word, he plucked Hibari’s shoes and socks from his feet and yanked his jet-black pants, belt, and underwear clean off in one stroke.

Though he strained until nearly blue in the face, still Hibari could not get his arms and legs to twitch in the slightest. But his torso at least wasn’t so bogged down for the moment. So when the tip of Mukuro’s trident approached the soft ivory belly flesh above his pubic bone, the muscles shrank away and flinched like crazy. “Don’t you even…”

“Relax, I’m just gonna make a little scratch to let my babies out. They can’t tie you up from under your **skin**!” On the last word Mukuro slit Hibari’s epidermis in a neat line from the hilt of his shaft to his waistline, skipping across his navel. The slit quickly beaded with garnet droplets which in turn swelled and unraveled into writhing masses of fibrous, gelatinous bloody tendrils. Mukuro knocked his knuckles together in some oddball mockery of excited clapping. His face could hardly contain his delight. Or rather, it didn’t. He squealed in a hushed falsetto, “Oh _Dio_ , I’m totally fangirling right now, yo. I feel like a little kid opening the best Christmas present of my life!”

“Shit…you’re almost as nauseating…as these worms…” Hibari rasped, wincing at the alien sensations oozing out of the gash and creeping over his nerve-tautened abdomen.

_I’m gonna barf…_

“They’re snakes. Aw, now look what you did, they’re insulted. I think they’re gonna shut you up good for that.” Sure enough, 2 tendrils reared up, snapped with tiny drippy fangs, drew themselves up to his neck, bit into his larynx, and wound themselves up into a solid choker the width of 3 fingers completely covering his Adam’s apple. Ostensibly taking a cue from the corner of Mukuro’s mouth twitching and widening his nearly face-bisecting grin still further, the membranous collar contracted. Hibari felt his larynx flatten into his neck, but the pressure stopped short of collapsing his trachea. “You should still be able to breathe under there; I’m not applying that much pressure. Ku-fu, that heaving chest of yours is exquisitely erotic. Let’s see…what else do I wanna tie up…?”

While Mukuro pondered his options, Hibari’s thoughts scrambled like ants in a freshly stomped nest. He couldn’t tell if he was getting dizzy from the ridiculous ostrich race of anxieties and emotions looping through his brain, or from having to wheeze through a half-flattened windpipe. To make matters worse his head was starting to throb. Make that both heads.

_Seriously?! I can’t be getting hard from this! This is abuse torture rape…_

_… I’m gonna be raped…_

_Damn it…_

_When are you going to be satisfied?_

_Why do you hate me so much when I’m the one with…the most reason to…hate…you…_

_…where are you licking? This…this can’t be feeling good… I can’t feel…this isn’t…_

_…this just sucks…_

Mukuro drew his tongue up each of Hibari’s legs from behind the knee up the inner thigh to the groin, as if he were a succulent candy, and simultaneously palpated his quadriceps, hips, and buttocks. Hibari’s limbs began to tremble and break out in gooseflesh. Wherever Mukuro touched, the snakes beneath his skin quivered happily and the ones freed from the prison of his flesh gradually wound themselves around the places that the beast with heterochromia had already christened with his tongue. Sopping crimson serpents gradually formed pairs of coils around both thighs and calves that linked up the backs of the legs. Then the links contracted, drawing his legs up. By the time Mukuro was done kissing and sucking at Hibari’s abdominals, each of his legs was folded in half and bound around the knee. The impatient wormy snakes wriggled down the backs of his thighs and squeezed under his buttocks, crossed behind the small of his back, pushed out from under him at the hips, and dove down into his groin, binding his scrotum and shaft firmly. Despite their sliminess, the serpentine ropes cutting up the middle of each butt cheek were actually rather abrasive, like hot, sticky, rubber-coated cord. Mukuro attacked his rival’s chest now, nipping at the collarbones, digging his fingertips into his pectorals and kneading as if they could produce milk if he worked them hard enough. He ground his own bulge into Hibari’s hog-tied naughty bits, extracting all sorts of heaving gasps and rasping grunts and soft, shuddering moans Hibari would’ve never imagined he could utter if he could help it.

“Damn…you…*gasp* you’ve had… a lot of practice…at this, haven’t you…?” Hibari choked out hoarsely, following with a cough and several gasps for air.

“Ku-fu-fu…I’m flattered you noticed. Yes, well, in at least 3 of the other 5 realms there’s not much to do but eat, sleep, fight, and fuck. You get good at sex in those places. …Hmm, I guess I should start giving your soon-to-be-pussy a little finger warm-up while my pets finish dressing you.” Mukuro frivolously walked his hand back down Hibari’s body, right over his snake-wrapped package, and further south where no bare fingers had ventured in a very long time. Instinctively, Hibari’s brain commanded his arms to lunge for Mukuro’s hand before any part of it could make it into his backside. But his arms had a new master, and at the first twitch of their deposed ruler inciting rebellion, they turned tail and ducked under his lumbar region where the senior pets keenly lashed them together with their sinewy bodies. Mukuro’s first finger slipped inside him unopposed.

“…Ngh…” many months out of practice, Hibari’s body reacted immediately and, thanks to the cock bindings, painfully. Meanwhile, the snakes that bound his hands behind his back mated with the ones binding his buttocks and nether regions, multiplying out from under him. They branched out and crisscrossed each other all the way around his trunk, weaving a dense corset from his hips to the undersides of his pectorals. Any whose heads stuck out of the top of the weave sank their miniature fangs into his breasts, save one in the middle, which stretched up to latch onto the wormy collar spun by its cohorts. Hibari struggled to sit up far enough to take stock of his perverse cocoon. When the pressure on his neck began to push at the backs of his eyeballs, he let his head drop with a thud and a breathless snigger.

_…What horseshit… If this much blood actually left my body, I’d be dead._

_No way all these snakes fit inside me I don’t think I even have this much blood to begin with—_

_Yeah…it’s an illusion, all an illusion, nothing but an illusion…_

“Did I hear a chuckle? You like what you see?” Fingering Hibari with one hand and fondling himself with the other, Mukuro sat back and admired his familiars’ handwork. “That’s a great look for you. I mean really, yo, SO sexy… Ku-fu, it’s like you’re gift-wrapped in tailor-made lingerie made of menses!” Hibari silently gagged at the description. “I better hurry up or I’ll come before you.” With that he gave the barely-exposed tip of Hibari’s phallus a quick, hard rub, and plunged a second finger into him.

“Gyuh…! Huh…*gasp* you…have one…fucked-up sense of…*gasp* what’s sexy…” Hibari wheezed. Lightheaded from the sluggish and scant delivery of blood to his brain, he let his head loll to one side and for the time being called off the rest of his body’s resistance while he caught his breath. Forced to breathe at such an abnormally languid pace and withering in the throbbing heat radiating across his bones from his pelvic region, he couldn’t help but find Mukuro’s rhythmic massaging of his insides somewhat hypnotic. The man of 6 lives had no trouble finding his prostate, after all, he had untold years of experience. It induced a cathartic sort of dull, bittersweet twinge in the pit of his stomach, like one might expect a day or two after trying straight leg lifts for the first time. Occasionally he subconsciously uttered a soft purr, especially when Mukuro pressed in a bit too deep or inserted the next finger. He hated to own up to the thought, but even the tiny teeth tearing at his pectorals were stimulating.

“Ku-fu-fu, see you’re enjoying it, aren’t you? But don’t get too relaxed. I’ll have you bucking in a minute… Four fingers should be enough to get me in.”

 “…Four?” Hibari cracked a strained, rebellious smile. “*gasp*…I thought…you wanted me to…feel it…*gasp* or are you… just…that bad?”

Mukuro twisted his words as usual, “You wanna be too tight, eh? I knew you were a glutton for punishment. All these years you’ve been waiting for someone strong enough to do you right. I like to think that’s one of my resurrection skills, too, sensing these things.” He gripped and tugged on Hibari’s gonads. “Well, don’t worry your pretty little head. Even if I’ve overshot it a little I’ll make you so tight and pack you so full you’ll think I’m hung like an elephant.”

Hibari winced. “It’s…a good thing…*gasp* dirty talk does…nothing for me, *gasp* ‘cuz…you **suck**.”

“Think I’ll start by filling up that annoying mouth,” Mukuro responded with a twitching lower eyelid. At the wave of a finger, the animated strings of congealed blood forming Hibari’s collar unraveled, crawled up to his ears, and morphed into a horse’s bit. There wasn’t much left to do at that point but savor the release of his windpipe and retreat into his head for a bit of strategy.

_Stay calm…_

_Minus the illusions it’s nothing new…_

_He obviously doesn’t plan to kill me hurt me bad maybe leave scars_

_Sick-o_

_The worms are illusions the pain the choking the occasional nightmare vision that’s the worst he can do and I’ve been there_

_Relax he’ll relax and get careless soon enough  he always does_

_That’ll be my opening. Maybe_

_If I can move_

_Of course I’ll be able to move. Real illusions are still figments of his imagination and if I can break his concentration poof they’re gone and I’ll tear his fucking pineapple head clean off_

_If I can move if I haven’t burned out if I_

_If I’m still sane_

_Heh-heh, I’m actually worried about this. Shut up.  The snakes are just a deeper more solid form of illusion. A new challenge I can take it_

_OK, they’re techniques from past lives in other realms, so they_

_No all those techniques are illusion._

_Or…wait. Actually, what is that mind control one? Does that qualify? Could be an illusion if he’s making them see something they’d wanna attack—_

_But then they’re acting against their own personalities. And what’s possession if not possession?_

_Is this a technique to possess the body while the mind stays conscious?_

_Fucking psychopath there’s no benefit to leaving the person conscious except to torture them_

_Yeah, he’d totally do that He’s doing it right now…_

_But it’s all illusions. Like usual has to be_

_Shit_

_Makes no sense if it’s not illusion and no sense if it is—_

“UFF!” Mukuro plowed his member into him about halfway, and “Nn…NGH! Nguh!” worked himself the rest of the way in with a few more thrusts.

“Ah…Aw man, that’s nice; that is NICE… You really haven’t fucked in forever. Damn…even with the warm-up your ass is TIGHT. But I bet if I give you a good squeeze up here…” The smiling spiky-headed sadist snapped the “hem” of the unctuous drying-blood-colored girdle, “you’ll open right up down here.” As if protesting the treatment, the living weave contracted. From his hips to his pectorals, Hibari began to feel the squeeze.

_Just an illusion stay calm just illusions keep it together you’ll get your chance soon _

The viscous vice breezed past the vapor-inducing constriction of Victorian corsets. He felt his ribs begin to pop and his guts slide over each other, organs squeezing into niches they weren’t supposed to occupy, sending the blood-snakes sleeping between the membranes into hysterics.

_Illusion you’re fine just illusion he’s just fucking with you don’t lose sight of…_

“Illusion…’s only…illusion…illu—…ill—…u-…ukh-…k-…” under the strain, his degenerating mantra began to leak out between heaves. He shuddered and clawed at his unctuous manacles and gasped for ever-shallower breaths as the snakes wrung weaker and hoarser moans of anguish from his collapsing chest cavity. All the while Mukuro reveled in the shuddering, throbbing cavity he fucked, deliriously flinging his hair and sweat about in ecstasy.

“HANH…! AH… _DIO_ …!”

Somewhere in the neighborhood of where his diaphragm used to be, Hibari felt pinch turn to twinge turn to jab as the tips of one rib after the next bit deeper and deeper into the side of his liver on one side and stomach on the other. Searing acid pain bubbled out of the gashes, dribbled curtains of fire down the sides of his liver and interior wall of his peritoneum. His entrails screamed one and all for a release. They got their wish in the worst imaginable form: his stomach imploded, bathing his body cavity in molten-hot breathtaking agony. He immediately wrenched his head to the side and vomited blood.

_OWW FUCK OH SHIT forget your chance pain’s unreal just wake up illusion wake up WAKE UP air need air WAKE UP NO PASS OUT die BUDDHA PLEASE LET ME BLACK OUT ALREADYYYYAAAAAAAAAGGGHH_

His head became an echo chamber for the muffled cracks and guttural pops of bones and organs collapsing catastrophically inside the girdle. The keen talons of blinding, deafening torture wore themselves down until they’d wrung every sensation from his body but paralyzing weakness and the postmortem spasms of many thousands of nerves crushed in their grip. He didn’t notice the girdle unravel—the damage was done. Memories of how it felt to move and breathe freely drained away with his lifeblood, seeped into the shabby bedding to await putrefaction. His fragmented thoughts dispersed like a disoriented flock of birds in a fog of anemia.

_For… love of…all things decent…why…fuck…am I still conscious…? …why can’t I…_

“Mm-mm, look at that sexy figure,” Mukuro’s voice taunted distantly. The back of Hibari’s head barely registered another twinge, not enough to make him realize Mukuro hoisting the remains of his upper body by the hair was responsible for his sudden elevation in vantage point. “Here, have a look. See what a good corset can do?” Hibari’s eyes lolled under their own weight, like his tongue and the rest of his head, without really meaning to see his ruined midsection. Nevertheless, and despite his dwindling vision, he glimpsed the unthinkable. Between his pectorals and his hips, his flesh and every bone, muscle, and organ encased were wrought into a bruise-colored gnarled rope, a hideous blood-weeping sausage perforated with bone shards and lined with a nearly-exposed spine.

_…Not my body… illusion…horror flick…not me…that’s…I’m…’d…be…dead…gonna…throw up…_

A spasm of disgust heaved one last gush of blood from his mouth, and then his head and eyelids fell to gravity and exhaustion.

_… Ah……finally—_

SLAP!

“Wake up, sleeping beauty!” Hibari opened his eyes to Mukuro looming over him, his face ever slashed with a grin of Schadenfreude. Breath, sensation, and realization surged back with a tempest’s fury, bringing the grievances of all manner of bruises and lacerations discoloring his torso. Hibari’s eyes flicked about the room and over his body, still naked but for his torn-open uniform blouse. Shockingly, though his body had retained its normal, uncrushed figure, it bore red and bruising marks from just about everywhere the snakes had bound him. His flanks were purpled and in places slightly skinned as if Mukuro had tried to kick in his ribcage. Cuts, scratches, and purple streaks lashed his stomach and thighs and the undersides of his pectorals. And his hands were still bound behind his back. Mukuro delighted in his widening eyes. “Just kidding, you were only out maybe 10, 15 seconds after my money-shot. So!” he clapped, “Ready for round 2?”

The last thing that escaped the delinquent prefect’s mouth before his punisher tucked in a second time was something between a gulp and a choke.


	3. Snuff Play

In the distant heavens, Venus had long since given up on piercing winter’s dank, grey shroud with her soft light, and Jupiter, trailing her by nearly half the sky, had taken up the challenge himself several hours ago. But if there was hope for a break in the clouds before, there sure wasn’t anymore. Sleet-laden nimbuses crept over the horizon, trawling through the flat blanket of stratus clouds over the sky like clipper ships through an icy sea, borne on the bitter gale that drowned out the already stifled moans and grunts from several more rounds of sexual torture emanating from the top floor of the Kokuyou Healthy Land.

Hibari’s conviction that all the abuse was illusory weakened with every virtually deadly climax. Each resolution brought only a split second of relief before Mukuro cruelly awakened him to square one with nothing to show for the previous round of abuse but more bruises. The second round involved Hibari humiliatingly spread-eagled between two of Mukuro simultaneously penetrating his backside, slowly morphing into a Judas Cradle and yanking him harder and further down onto it until his pelvis broke open. The third round saw Mukuro send a 10-meter-long rope of snakes to cozy up to his penis and plunge into Hibari with him doggy-style, and keep going, winding and writhing and in some places gnawing its way backwards through Hibari’s digestive tract, up his throat, and out his mouth, effectively threading itself through Hibari’s body from one end to the other. To add insult to injury, Mukuro rang in the end of the round by ejaculating on Hibari’s face via the snake’s mouth. The battered delinquent had guessed earlier on that Mukuro would probably try for his lucky number six, but coming into round four, through the haze of his own fatigue the residual pain of being chewed through, he could see that his torturer was also finally beginning to tire. Four rounds it’d be, then; but Mukuro had something special in mind for his finale, something firmly intended to hammer home his declaration of complete conquest over his antisocial prey.

Naked, cuffed, beat to hell, and smeared with both men’s semen, Hibari’s body heaved with his alternating raspy gasps and whispered self-assurances that all this torture was an illusion and his life was in no danger. But he was no longer convinced of his words. These illusions were leaving too many terribly real marks. Mukuro’s own heavy breathing was cold comfort, but he played it up anyway. “…Are you…quite done…? I’d like to be…devoured…sometime soon…”

“Ku-fu-fu…I think I can…put out one more round before bed… But since you’re enjoying yourself so much…I think I’ll make this one extra special… I’ll need my trident…” he trailed off with heavy breath and detached the business end of his trident, giving him a 3-tined dagger. He approached twirling it about his finger. Hibari braced himself for the worst.

But for the time being he planted it in the wall, grabbed Hibari at the hips, and dipped his tongue down to Hibari’s flaccid and bruised member. Despite the wear and tear, its responsiveness was unfazed. The more Mukuro lavished his mouth upon it, the more it perked up.

“Whoa…you’re…actually giving me head?” Hibari raised his eyebrows.

“You said you wanted to be eaten soon,” Mukuro said between lapping, “I figured ‘soon’ meant ‘any time now.’” He planted a kiss on the head. “I told you I’d show you the pleasure in the pain.”

“Fucking ass…” Hibari’s chest labored again already, “…Lying your fucking ass off…”

“Oh stop it; you’ve been relishing my favors the whole night. Otherwise, you’d have been screaming, yes?”

“…” Hibari just twitched at the sound of a spring or some fiber of mental fortitude strained to its breaking point snapping in the back of his mind from sheer irony. “You…can’t be serious…”

“Nope,” Mukuro curtly cut off the conversation with a snide grin and returned to giving Hibari’s manhood the lingual work-over. For several minutes they left the hastening wind outside to whisper icily insidious curses at the night alone. But eventually, Mukuro broke the merciful quietude with a mortifyingly unnecessary observation. “Hmm, why aren’t you coming?”

“Take a…mother…fucking…guess…” his victim hissed.

“Huh. Maybe it needs a little love from mine…” Mukuro, oddly bereft of a sinister sneer, diligently wedged himself between Hibari’s legs, extracted a few more bloody vipers from old wounds on his captive, and bound their cocks together. The crimson living twine extracted quivering moans almost simultaneously from both the boys as they cinched tight. “Ahhn…ah…hey, that was kinda hot. We should do a duet!”

“Don’t…try to act…friendly…after all this…”

“But friendly’s all I’ve ever been tonight, yo,” Mukuro sulked disingenuously.

“Wrap it up,” Hibari ordered as firmly as he could muster, ultimately sounding more pitiable than imposing what with slithering, slimy parasites clogging his muscles solid.

“I just did, though. Ah—shush…I know; I’m incorrigible. I just figured I’d go this route since your pussy’s gotten kinda loose. Wouldn’t want to cause permanent damage, you know. That’d be bad for me, too. Meantime…” Mukuro gazed almost longingly at his fingers. “That frees up these little guys. It’s getting harder for me to come, too.”

“Will you…stop…narrating?!” Hibari barked impatiently.

His victimizer just grinned as serenely as a Buddha. “Shut the fuck up and be grateful for the view.” He pulled his pants down to his thighs and reached between his legs to his backside. “If I rest my head here…” the 6-eyed beast of a boy rested his cheek over Hibari’s heart, straining to eye him with an expression seemingly demanding repayment for the supposed favor, “You can see my face when I cum, right?”

The prefect blinked hard and shook his head. For all the sense Mukuro was making, Hibari half expected his brain to pop and start oozing out of his ears straining to establish pattern and motive. Watching Mukuro’s brows twitchily knit together, his flushing lips part to release tremulous purrs and moans and then grind into Hibari’s chest to silence the embarrassing noises, feeling their members throbbing in tandem…it was an implausibly anticlimactic burlesque of the rest of the night’s otherwise compelling decent into Hell. It almost felt…dare he think it…good? Of course, if the point of it was simply to confound and infuriate his victim, it’d have probably set a new record were Hibari not so spent.

_What the fuck is he doing? God damn exhibitionist_

_Does he think if I cum while watching this I’ll think I’m actually infatuated with him?_

_Oh, hell no damn and hell_

_Coming doesn’t even feel good anymore think I sprained a hip back hurts I just wanna go home and sleep_

_I get it already you got me_

_You’re tired, I’m tired…_

_I don’t even have the energy to be pissed off anymore_

_Stop rutting and get off there’s no pleasure in this  just stimulus response_

_God damn it get to the part where you torture me and get it over with I wanna pass out and forget about this_

_Maybe I’ll find the liquor and get drunk when I get home think I finally understand the booze appeal_

_Well shit something’s coming out  of me dunno if it’s come or blood or piss or_

“Ah…hey…who said you could come first?” Mukuro stopped and glared daggers directly into Hibari’s eyes, which Hibari promptly mirrored.

“Wait, what? …I didn’t feel anything… Even if I did, who said I couldn’t? …Weren’t you fingering yourself…for my benefit?”

“Ku-fu-fu, well aren’t you ego-centric? …Now I definitely don’t feel bad about doing this,” Mukuro chuckled, allowing his woefully thin amiable veneer to chip off and expose the ever-present sadistic mania lurking between the cracks. He plucked his trident from its sheath in the wall and almost too-easily hacked off Hibari’s left leg mid-thigh with a stomach-churning sinewy rip. Hibari choked back a howl of pain; a loud, gurgling hiss slithered out instead, along with trickles of tears. A contented Mukuro sheathed his blade in the mattress fluff and grabbed the hilt of their phalli once again, wherein he made a not-at-all-but-should’ve-been-embarrassing discovery. “Oh, wait… This is just pre-come… Oops.”

“No shit…!” Hibari spat through gritted teeth.

“Ku-fu, well, it’s OK, this position isn’t doing as much for me as I thought anyway. Your hole’s still better. You’ll just have to clench for me.” And with that, Mukuro unceremoniously and impenitently unbound their penises and buried his manhood in the same hole he’d been using most of the night preceding. Hibari hardly felt it over the screaming pain from the bloody stub that used to be his left leg. Mukuro paused.

“What…the hell…are you waiting…for?!”

“I just wonder… You won’t cum… I guess you would be desensitized after I penetrated you so much deeper last round. You’re a tough nut to bust in lots of ways, aren’t you?”

Hibari shook away the clouds of anemia rolling into his mind. “You think…I can feel…anything…over this bloody stump?!”

“You know what? You’re right. My dick alone can’t compete. I gotta get my magic hands dirty.” Mukuro flashed the broadest, most malicious grin of the night and snatched up his trident once again. “Let’s open you up, shall we?”

“…Huh?” Hibari’s eyes bulged. With uncannily juvenile relish, Mukuro sank the central tine of his trident into Hibari’s right flank, tore straight across to the opposite side, and merrily slung the blood and meat off with a flick of the wrist. The gash bisecting Hibari’s stomach gushed blood with abandon, pulsating and steaming to suit the caustic anguish that came with it. For the first time in this and many, many war-torn nights before, the shock and agony were too great to dam up behind his larynx. His face contorted to its limits to make way for a mighty shriek.

“ **AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUGGHHH!!!** ”

“It’s like one of those little Kinder Sorpresa candies! So much fun stuff to play in,” Mukuro rubbed his scheming paws, plunged them into Hibari’s gaping wound, and merrily started rummaging around. “Let’s see, here…stomach, liver, intestines, more intestines…” he mumbled to himself, tearing loose coil after coil of Hibari’s small bowels and depositing them into a heap on his chest, crushing the softest viscera between his fingers, and letting other small organs roll around in his hands like stress balls.

Hibari gasped and choked and drenched himself in cold sweat, watching helplessly as Mukuro disemboweled him alive and conscious. All the familiar signs of hypovolemic shock crashed down on him simultaneously: the violent shivers, the frantic and weakening heartbeat, the tightening and heaving of his chest in desperate thirst for oxygen. The room scintillated and fragmented before his eyes. The pungent scent of iron assaulted his nose from inside his body and out. At some point while Mukuro heartily dug around for more treasures in the gory mess he’d made of Hibari’s insides, his fingers caught and tore Hibari’s stomach open. Acrid, garnet fluid rushed in, only for Hibari to immediately and copiously cough it back out. No extant words could do justice to the excruciating pain flooding his core. What little remained of his vision in the swirling blur of tears and hypoxia warped Mukuro’s form into something perhaps more true to his nature. The last glaringly obvious feature of that ogre’s dim, twisted form was a gaping abyss. Hibari didn’t need to hear Mukuro’s delighted cackle echo from its cavernous depths to know it was the demon’s mouth. He could see straight down it into the depths of hell. For the first time in his life, Hibari despaired.

“…nh……ungh…kill…k-kill me…” he choked out between heaving up burbles of blood in time with his arrhythmic pulse.

“What’s that?” the frivolous demon leaned down, making a big to-do of cupping his ear and listening closely. Aggravated and with self-restraint drowning in blood as much as the rest of him, the prefect at death’s door spat blood in Mukuro’s eye.

“…j-…ugh……just…let me die…”

“You’re no fun,” Mukuro casually thumbed the blood off, sucked the soiled digit between his pouty lips, and went right back to rifling through his victim’s viscera. “I haven’t even found m—Oh, wait…there’s my penis,” Mukuro cheerily rocked back and forth, jerking himself off through Hibari’s large intestine and fingering the interior parts of Hibari’s gonads. Hibari’s icily cold toes curled as Mukuro blissfully yanked and tore the remaining fragile tissues in his open body cavity and let his seed from previous rounds coat the exposed peritoneum.

Death began to draw its black curtain over Hibari’s eyes. “…’s…dark……e…enough…al…read…y…” he rasped. His head lolled in random directions, as if searching for Mukuro in deep space.

“I can’t hear you!” Mukuro twittered sardonically.

Gradually his bloodless limbs became too heavy to even shiver. “…c-cold……let m-me…d-……ugh-h… _please_ …” he coughed up another garbled, breathless whisper. “……s…m body………end…me…”

“Ku-fu-fu, I hold your release in the palm of my hand. Do you want it?”

“…y-ye…s…”

“Should I give it to you? I don’t know if I should… but…maybe if you say the magic words. Come now; say ‘give it to me.’” Mukuro leaned down to Hibari’s ear and reiterated in a self-satisfied whisper, “ _Say it._ ”

“……G-give it…t……me…”

“Can I hear a please?”

“………p…plea…s…”

“Ku-fu-fu-fu… **ka-ha-ha-ha-ha** …! OK, then. Good night, m’ little birdie. Sleep well!” Mukuro sneered, ripped out the last reachable organs, and threw them on Hibari’s face. “Enjoy your new gilded cage.” As if life itself had sided with Mukuro, in one last quirk of cruel irony, Hibari and his tormentor came in unison and spattered his gutted body cavity with their mingling emission. Mercifully, expelling his seed took the last of Hibari’s life with it.

 

_…No regrets…?_

Hibari mentally scoffed. To think he used to live by those words. Then again, tonight he’d failed himself in so many other ways before that. He let an enemy lead him by the nose into a trap; he failed to halt or even momentarily obstruct the assault on every inch of his body, inside and out; and he allowed himself to pushed so far as to beg for a swift execution. Now he wondered if he’d rather still be in that blind limbo just moments before death. So appalled was he from waking up less than an hour later, bruised and battered but fully intact, that he half expected to find a barren wasteland pockmarked with pits of fire, or some other half-baked modern notion of hell if he opened his eyes. He’d even briefly convinced himself that to wake up embraced by the beast that slain his pride—if the arm draped over his body indeed belonged to him—was proof positive that he’d been condemned to purge his sins in the stuff of nightmares. Even so, he supposed he should be thankful that at least here, wherever “here” was, he could move again, sort of.

At last he recovered the courage to open his eyes and was almost surprised to find he was still flesh and blood lying on a grungy mattress in a rotted-out theater next to a teenage devil incarnate. Self-preservation instincts took over at the sight of the demon’s face. Gradually, painstakingly, he slid out from under his captor’s arm. His breath caught in his throat—Mukuro grunted and turned over. But after that he slept soundly as if he were hibernating. Hibari scooped up his clothes and backed away on tenterhooks all the way through the crooked and cracking doorframe. And then he bolted as fast as his sore muscles and shaky legs and the stabbing pain from his tailbone to his sternum permitted, first to the bathroom and then, once relieved and clothed, out of the decrepit complex through a side window.

Halfway across the mostly mud-entombed ruins of the zoo outside, the haggard prefect slowed to a limping jog, then to a stagger. Pictures slowly reemerged from the dizzying blizzard of noise whiting out his mind. Reality began to sink in, cold and lashing as the unusually bitter, mist-laden November wind.

_Mukuro…he…he can literally…do anything he wants to me now…_

_Even kill me…_

_With a breath…strangle me with my own blood…anything he fucking wants…_

_… If he can, he’ll probably…have his way with me again… He likes old tricks that work…_

_How many times could tonight repeat  itself?_

_What do I do no—OH SHIT IT’S STILL DRIPPING OUT OF MEEUGHHH—_

He shuddered, as much from revulsion as from the cold. Never in his life had he so badly pined for a hot shower. Or perhaps a water cannon; his skin felt soiled to the point of sloughing off, and he’d have welcomed any cleaning mechanism astringent enough to help it along.

_…Ugh…oh gross… feel filthy disgusting…_

_Is this for life?_

_No chance…_

_No cracks No loopholes…_

_No revenge No escape-No-reprieve-No-end—_

“N _—_ urk—ulkgh—” Hibari stumbled against a half-buried wall of faux rock that was once the backdrop of a big-cat enclosure, and twice spattered the clay underfoot with vomit.

_Just…gotta go home…_

Nearing entrance of the former park, Mother Nature decided to spit on him, too. This time, the sky opened up and released a near-freezing squall that, rather than cleanse, succeeded only in gluing his clothes to his body with slushy mud. Hibari, stunned at this string of absurdly horrid luck, clenched his fists and yelled skyward.

“AW, COME ON!!”

He wasn’t expecting 3 simple words to hurt his throat so much. Had he really screamed that hard in the care of the ogre with 6 lives? In any case, knowing enough of the dangers of exposure, he took his chances and sprinted ahead, dodging protruding rocks, hopping barricades, and ducking overarching foliage. He traced the circuitous path of shelves meandering down the impressive, landslide-inundated hillside, skidding the last few meters on rain-slicked clay. Thankfully the slope dropped him right onto level asphalt. A few hundred meters to the west, the unkempt groundcover and rubble swallowing the ancient highway on the Kokuyou side of the canal gave way to a corrugated metal grating and then to relatively new pavement as the road crossed a short, flat bridge into Namimori. Midway over the manmade stream, he stopped to catch his breath. New yet familiar pain carved through his body from larynx to breastbone. He retched again off the side of the bridge and came away shaking violently. The sleet stung his exposed skin as if he’d rolled in shattered glass and salt, and his joints ached from the cold.

_I’m not gonna make it  home…_

_Damn it ow… Think I’m shit coming down with ow something…bleeding hell_

_Find shelter…call someone…_

_Can’t tell mom wouldn’t understand can’t let her see me like this…_

_… scared…_

_…This is…fear…?_

_I never …this hurts……I-… Am I…actually……?_

_…Is Dino… cold is he in town?_

_Shelter… so cold shelter…_

About 2 city blocks down from the Namimori side of the bridge was a covered bus stop. He forced his overwrought wobbly legs to take him there at top speed.

_I’ll rest here…go again in a few minutes…_

Well, the plan was to hop bus stops until he found a shelter he could get inside of, but once he’d wilted onto the bench his body decided the bus stop would have to do. Within a few moments of sitting down, hurt and fatigue caught up with him and anchored him to the dank wooden slats.

_…Shit…Can’t get up… freezing my ass off shaking too bad…_

_Gotta fuck call Dino_

_…Please let this work…_

_Please damn it, be in town…_

_…Pick up, pick up…_

He dialed the blonde boss’s cell phone. Several agonizing seconds passed before the ringing started on the other end. One intonation went by, then 2. Nerves compounded Hibari’s shuddering with every missed ring. But halfway through the third, a groggy yet youthful adult male’s voice with a springy Italian accent broke the panic-inducing string of electric chimes. For Hibari, it was like making contact with a guardian angel.

“Uh…’allo…anyone there,” Dino inquired blearily.

“…D-…D-Dino…I…” Hibari stammered through chattering teeth.

“…Kyouya? Is that you?”

“Uh-h-huh… I…n-need a…r-r-ride”

“At 1:50 AM? Are you OK? You sound awful.”

“…I-…uh-I ca-…I d-don’t want…I-…” Hibari’s already barely-audible voice grew more strained. “Just come…!”

“Um—never mind. Just give me a couple street names to put in MapQuest and I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“B-bus stop…c-corner of… G-Green Borough Avenue a-and…Ogata S-Street…”

“OK, Green Borough and Ogata… Let me just throw on some clothes and get Romario and we’ll be there shortly. Hang in there.”

“T…thanks…”

 

About half an hour later, a black Ferrari Pinin pulled up and Dino emerged in his trademark fur-lined hoodie. Hibari called out with a feeble whistle. Dino found the sodden and shivering prefect curled up under his sodden ash-grey blazer in the corner of the Plexiglas box next to a pile of wet newspapers.

“Kyouya, are you alright? Can you stand?” Hibari shifted and slowly sat up, but his trembling legs buckled as soon as he started to put weight on them. He slumped back against the rear wall, defeated.

“……l-legs are numb…” he whispered.

“Must be really bad if you’re complaining…OK, I’ll carry you,” Dino scooped his infirm pupil up in his arms and jogged back to the car. In the light from the car’s ceiling that came on when he opened the door, Dino noted the disconcerting blue tinge in his junior’s lips. “Romario,” he ordered as he climbed into the back and buckled Hibari in, “Turn up the heat, the kid’s half-frozen.”

“You got it, boss.”

“Here, Kyouya,” Dino wrapped his fur-trimmed olive-brown jacket over Hibari’s front. “You should probably take off your wet shirt, too.”

“…hn…” Hibari didn’t move.

“Should I…take you to the hospital?”

“N-no…anything but…”

“…Romario, step on it.”

The rest of the ride was quiet, forgettable in Hibari’s mind. Despite his tiredness, he half-wished Dino had been his typical, distractive self rather than this stoic bastion of sanity he was trying to be in what he thought was the best interest of his ravaged student. What he really wanted right then was something reminiscent of a normal day, anything. It would’ve helped if he could stop slipping in and out of flashback-laden nightmares; at least then he wouldn’t be drawing Dino’s wide and harried eyes every time he jolted back from the precipice overlooking the most hideous dreamscapes Mukuro had to offer. Hibari’s fragmented memory of the ride back to the hotel in Dino’s car and subsequent ride to the room on Dino’s back ultimately cemented its bits to a common matrix of looping visions filled with his gory sexual exploitation in some deep cavern of hell raining blood from its cadaverous stalactites.

Sometime in the midst of watching his last satiated 6-eyed torturer slink off and sensing another rapacious wraith circling his body in the darkness, somebody blasted him in the face with incandescent light and the roar of running bathwater, and started stripping off the clothes he forgot he was wearing. Momentarily stunned, he pawed the dazzling haze for a perpetrator. The surface his back rested against shifted, disappeared, and was replaced by a cold, hard wall. A humanoid silhouette swelled before his maladjusted eyes and damp fingers began to tug at his trousers, finally jerking his adrenal glands to life.

“Whoa-WHOA, HEY STOP! Kyouya, it’s me! AACK!” Dino hurled himself over backward, narrowly missing the toilet on his way to the bathroom floor, to avoid Hibari’s flying fist. “OW…” As soon as he shooed away the stars dancing before his eyes, Dino saw Hibari plastering himself against the corner where the bathtub met the opposite wall, gripping the hem of his pants with one hand, brandishing a fist with the other, shivering easily as hard as before and evidently trying his best to stare daggers into Dino’s soul with his bulging, feral eyes. “Kyouya… Relax, it’s me. Your tutor… Look, I’m just trying to get you undressed so I can help you clean the mud off and warm up. OK?”

“…uh…” Hibari blinked hard and shook his head. His fist dropped a few centimeters.

“I, uh, I don’t know what happened to you back there, but I can assure you you’re in safe hands now. I’m not going to do anything weird. Just trying to help, OK? Just calm down for me, alright?” Dino eased forward. Hibari coughed and winced as much from the cruel irony as the pain.

“…S-safe hands…h-huh ……you’re r-wrong…” he cast his glower of smoldering scorn toward the peach-colored bathroom rug and balled up tighter for warmth. “…I’ll…t-take off the r-rest…myself…”

Dino couldn’t help but comment now that he’d stood back and gotten a good look, “…So many bruises…how—?”

“Sh-shut up,” Hibari hissed under his breath, hiding his face beneath his hair while slowly disengaging himself from the garments covering his lower body. He pushed his pile of pants and other leg-wear aside and returned to his defensive ball, resting his head on his knees and issuing a few more dry coughs. “Don’t s-stare…f-feel disgusting al-r-ready…”

“…OK, um…” Dino paused and felt the bathwater. Satisfied, he continued, “Well, can you climb into the bathtub?”

“…” Hibari tremulously and with great difficulty hoisted himself up onto the wall of the tub, and a slight bit of forward momentum carried him over such that he had to shoot out a hand and catch himself against the tub’s back wall. And like that he was stuck; couldn’t reach the bottom to lower himself in gently, and couldn’t think how to position his legs to do the job either.

“Hold up, Kyouya, I’ll—,” Dino began to approach.

His student glared over his shoulder scarcely concealing his humiliation. “I’m f-fine! I’m…just h-having a…hard time m-moving…my legs—” His attempted forcefulness sent him into coughing fit.

“I can see why! You’re bleeding down the backs of your legs! Whoa—!” Dino caught his student not a millisecond too soon; his junior’s coughing had shaken him loose of his awkward arch over the tub. “Gotcha; easy does it…” The blonde hooked his remaining arm under his pupil’s limp legs, ignoring the thin ribbon of dark partly-dried blood down his inner thigh, and lowered him into the heated water. Hibari briefly gasped at the difference of temperature, but soon settled in. “See, was that so bad?”

Hibari cleared his throat and pushed Dino away. “Just…stop t-talking a-b-bout it…” He slumped against the back of the tub.

“Fair enough…I think I already know,” Dino said, peeling the wrapper off a bar of hotel soap. Then he set to work, scrubbing the dismal teenager’s mud-spattered legs on up to his trembling trunk.

Through the tiny, wavering slivers between his eyelids, Hibari caught a glimpse of a thin pinkish wisp or two floating up from his legs to the surface. Some unpleasantly snarky corner of his mind fancied the tenuous swirls of rewetted blood the remnants of his innocence, mere minutes from its final departure down the tub drain. That blood wasn’t his anymore, nor was any of the blood in his body for that matter. And he couldn’t really bring himself to care. He’d already been on the other side—he knew that infinite black chasm at once blood-curdling in its cruel finality and a tantalizing promise of sweet release. His overlong adrenaline rush fading, the steam and the slightly too warm water appealed to his exhaustion and lulled him into languorous submission.

“…Di…” Hibari started, head lolling.

Dino abruptly stopped scooping the warm water over the still-dry parts of his pupil’s body. “Did you say something?” He leaned in. No response. The kid just kept up his war of attrition with gravity’s pull on his eyelids and head. “Guess not…” A couple seconds’ hesitation later, the rinsing resumed.

Perhaps he wasn’t sure he wanted to be heard. Hibari’s mouth continued to twitch and cough and murmur mostly incoherent, voiceless anxieties, implicit pleas for some nebulous idea of aid. “…s-……t-tired…”

On an arbitrary day at an arbitrary time, including nap time or sparring time with the various little yappy dogs playing chicken on the borderlands of his turf, Hibari might’ve told you he was a fairly contented soul. And if he were feeling verbose, he might’ve added he got to where he was because he never did anything half-assed. Well, neither did his body, especially not under such stress. Like the rest of him, his immune system had little concept of strategic retreat and opted instead to crash spectacularly. Neither hot water nor towel nor fuzzy bathrobe over one of Dino’s spare shirts and boxers nor double layer of hotel comforters could get the boy to stop shaking himself apart. Rather, his heat all went to his head, engulfing his brain in feverish nightmares even before sleep claimed him. A scene much like Hibari’s initial struggle against Dino removing his clothes unfolded again as the mentor attempted to offer his suffering student the only other source of heat available: his body. Hibari deliriously wrenched and jabbed and cuffed his elder friend’s ear, unfocused eyes darting and finding neither target nor escape.

“Ow! What are you—hey, now—OW! Stop for a sec! I’m trying to help—yow!” Dino dodged and deflected the blows as gingerly as possible but got nowhere fast. “ _Cazzo_ , I really didn’t wanna have to do this, but…” Eventually he had to pin his student’s limbs one at a time, first catching each leg and wedging them under his knees, and then snatching the prefect’s swatting arms out of the air and slamming them to the mattress. “Stay still a minute!” Firmly trapped and blasted with a shout his febrile brain couldn’t make sense of, Hibari started to hyperventilate. Dino cringed, “W-Wait, now, don’t do that! Calm down, deep breaths, you’re gonna make yourself—,” Much as Dino foresaw in his head, the prefect’s abnormal respirations triggered a persistent spate of dry coughing that constructively interfered with his chills, jolting his entire body ferociously. Dino lost his grip and Hibari hurled his upper body toward his knees with the force of diaphragm contracting. After a few seconds’ pause, Dino figured this was the best chance he had at getting his understudy bundled up as he needed to be, while Hibari was seized up in a ball. He drew the covers over the both of them, started by rubbing the teenager’s back, and eased hand and body forward, over his shoulder and under it, soothingly but firmly stroking his side and murmuring reassurances. “Get a hold of yourself, Kyouya… It’s just me, just your Dino… let’s try to breathe deep…let it out slow…relax…” Hibari’s fit attenuated rapidly in step with his little remaining strength. His rigid body gradually went limp as coughing steadily turned to ragged panting. “That’s it… good…you can sleep now…I’m not gonna let anything else happen to you…” Hibari registered a large, warm hand running down his arm to his own frozen hand and bundling it up like a glove. As another bone-splintering chill gripped and rattled his body. He felt his every muscle cry out to the soft irradiance of the body next to him, and his reluctance broke down.

“…I…r-r-really w-wish…you c-could……” Hibari rasped and inched deeper into Dino’s warming embrace. Then his breathing rate abruptly dropped and Dino knew the poor kid was finally relieved of his consciousness.


	4. Stand Back Up

There was a time earlier in his high school career—Hibari couldn’t quite remember which year—he’d picked up Dante’s _Inferno_ for either literature or social studies. He’d been rather disappointed in Dante’s narcissistic bombasts on his own virtuosity and the follies of his enemies, as they detracted from the brilliantly cruel and amusing irony of each ring. But the Ring of Wrath had always stuck out in his mind for some reason. Perhaps it was because at the time he figured if Hell took the form of Dante’s fancy and he wound up there, that would probably be the circle he’d land in. Momentarily he could see himself as the jackass who spent eternity instigating chases and fights with the demonic guards and the other damned souls through the rivers of boiling blood.

This nightmare—what was it, his fourth that night?—he found himself floating in such an accursed river, but terrifyingly alone in the endless expanse of boiling blood sea and coal-black starless sky. No other damned souls, no signs of any rings off hell above or below, no demon guards pinning him just beneath the surface with their pitchforks and javelins…just boiling—nay, writhing, blood for eternity in every direction but up. The pain flooding his body wasn’t quite right for the situation, either. Rather than the white-hot acerbic pain of scalding flesh from the outside, a deep, blunt throbbing with no particular locus threaded through his muscle fibers, sapping his strength and leaving him feeling like a solid mass of bruises, as if every muscle in his body had been tenderized with a sledgehammer. There he hung, oddly bobbing upright with the blood just to his tailbone despite the lack of terra firma to keep him that far above the surface.

However, his post was anything but safe: the blood sea nearest to him gradually unraveled into the snakes that helped Mukuro have his way so handily earlier, and in sparse clusters they began to slither up his naked, beaten flesh. Just as he remembered, it was nigh on impossible to move: the horrid things were inside him as well, throttling his muscles. They dripped sodden, goopy cobwebs of their brethren all over him, as if trying to bind him to the repugnant sea. The more they did so, the more he realized the thick supporting ropes were beginning to look a lot like arms and hands. Thinking he might be able to duck out from under them, he sucked in a large cache of air and submerged himself.

Bad move: the surface instantaneously gelled into a stretchy but decidedly impenetrable membrane. He scratched and kicked and punched, but the rubbery garnet surface absorbed all his blows without injury. He peered in all directions along the underside of the surface, praying for a ray of light to show him salvation. He saw lights, yes, but no indication of a breech in the barrier. They were pinpricks in the distance, like stars, but slightly oblong and glowing red with an eerie, dim indigo aura. The red he could justify; this was a sea of blood after all, last he checked. However, the shape and weakly fluorescing indigo haze disconcerted him, more so now that he realized they might just be getting closer. Suddenly the burning in his lungs for lack of air didn’t seem quite so urgent. He ventured a glance straight down into the inky black abyss and lost a few bubbles of precious oxygen. Whatever was approaching him from either side had summoned many more reinforcements from directly below him, and they were close enough now that he could see what they were. He felt a solid lead weight drop clean through the pit of his gut. They were eyes. And not just any eyes: the red embers smoldering in each and every one of them threw into silhouette Chinese numerals from 1 to 6. They were only a few meters away now—close enough that as they swarmed and clambered over each other, he could begin to make out the silhouettes of the bodies those eyes were attached to. Only they weren’t entire bodies. They were hands. Every eye was affixed to the palm of a gnarled, seemingly boneless hand. Another meter closer and he could see every finger terminated in a snake’s snapping head. After one more punch to the rubbery surface confirmed his lack of alternatives, he turned his fists on the shadowy serpentine fingers of gloom.

He’d been outnumbered many times in his life. Five to one, 50 to one, 500 to one…he’d never found strength in numbers particularly threatening. As a rule, the more people fought together, the more they sucked individually, and since they could only attack with so many at a time, numbers tended not to make a difference above a handful so long as he had plenty of stamina. But these hands were a real handful. They could literally attack from any direction by the hundreds. It never seemed to occur to them that only so many could squeeze through a given area at a time; they simply oozed through each other to get their share. They enveloped him in a solid, writhing gauntlet, slipped right past any attempted strike like a school of silverfish dodging a shark, and sank their fangs into every inch of exposed skin. Their venom flooded his body with simultaneous skin-shriveling heat and bone-splitting cold, and their fangs pulled and tore at his skin as the eager stragglers forced their way between the members of the first wave. Did they intend to tear him limb from limb? No; if it was Rokudo Mukuro, killing him could not possibly be simple. It had to be a veritable a treatise in humiliation, to leave his body festooned in hallmarks of perversity, and to at least momentarily break his will to live. He got a pretty good idea of what expediently fit all those descriptions as soon as he felt the hundreds of hands try to torque his legs up to meet his chest.

_I’m gonna get it in the ass again, aren’t I?_

“Yep,” a ghostly but all-too-familiar voice answered his thoughts with a distant but infuriatingly familiar chortle through the nose. The moment the last echo faded away, a swarm of the demonic hands as big around as his lower leg impaled him from below, liberating the last of his breath as it juiced his entrails, shredded his intestines as it drilled up through his abdomen and burst from his chest. The dim flurry of eyes glowing in necrotic colors shimmered and warped. The blood that didn’t immediately escape him turned to slush. And oddly inappropriate pain tore up his spine and slammed his brain just hard enough to shatter and disperse the blackness.

“Oh, you’re awake?” Dino’s voice pierced the blinding light while his eyes focused. They resolved the shadows of blinds in the sunlight blasting the cream-colored wall next to the bathroom door. Thankfully, a shirtless Dino inserted his body between Hibari’s eyes and the nearly luminous paint. Alas, it also clued him into the fact that it wasn’t the reflected light from the wall throwing a blanket of oppressive heat over his head. His Italian mentor leaned in closer. “How do you feel?”

“…nnh……sick…” Hibari murmured just above a whisper and coughed a few times. After a short pause to recover his breath, he lethargically pointed to one of his eyes, asking, “…your face… What happened?”

“You mean the shiner? Heh, let’s just say neither one of us slept all that well last night.”

“Oh…” Hibari shamefacedly averted his gaze, which Dino knew was the closest thing to an apology Hibari knew how to eke out.

“No worries, you’ve been through enough hell. Roll over a sec, let me check your temp…” With abnormal exertion and plenty of protest from his bruised ribs, Hibari pushed himself up from his stomach onto his side and extracted most of his face from its imprint in the pillow. Dino pressed one hand to his own forehead and the other on his student’s. “Hmm… Yeah, you’re running a fairly high fever. I thought I’d postpone taking you home until this afternoon so you can get some more rest before I try to move you.” Dino elaborated as he buttoned his shirt. “Anyway, I can call your mom for you since you seem to be losing your voice.”

Hibari pushed himself up on one elbow and clutched his spinning, throbbing head. “…You sure…? I think…I caught the flu… You might catch it…”

“I’ve already exposed myself to you more than enough to get it if I’m going to. What’s a few more hours gonna change?” Dino cinched up his tie. “So! I still have to go into work today, but I’ll be back around lunchtime, hopefully with a new company under my name. And maybe a little more leverage with Russia—oh yeah, that stuff with Grenadier and them early last year? We’re _still_ cleaning that shit up. Anyway, before I go, do you want any breakfast?”

“Ugh…” Hibari gulped back a wave of nausea and slumped back down into the pillow. “Only if it’s a painkiller…”

“Hmmm…I don’t know if I have any medicine on me. Romario may; I’ll go check. In the meantime, I had one of the guys take your clothes to the guests’ laundry room in the basement, and I got you a couple bottles of water. You should try to drink at least one of these bottles by the time I get back.”

“Give it… Puke taste in my mouth…” Hibari reached out languid arm.

“When did you throw up?”

“Before you found me…”

Dino scratched his chin and mumbled to himself, “Thought I smelled bile.”

“…Really?” Hibari growled hoarsely.

“Well, hey, not like you could help it. Really, though, what on earth happened last night that left you in such a sorry state?”

“I don’t…wanna talk about it….”

“Those bruises were awfully suggestive—”

“I can’t…talk about it right now…so drop it.”

“ _Mannaggia_ *, can you at least tell me who did it? You were bleeding out of your a—!” (*T/N: generic term of frustration)

“SHUT UP—!” Yet again, Hibari broke into a nearly rib-cracking coughing fit.

“Here, drink some water,” Dino rushed to help Hibari sit up and held one of the water bottles to his lips. Hibari peevishly snatched it and gulped the universal solvent until he was out of breath.

“…This flu…and that…are 2 different things… Just…shitty luck…”

 

On his way back to the hotel for lunch and a chance to check up on his patient, Dino decided to get his call to Hibari-san out of the way, despite the high probability that she was out for lunch or shopping. Or maybe not. Last night’s temperature drop was steep enough that frost lingered beneath the urban flora until after 10 AM. Pedestrians puffed as much smoke from their mouths as cars from their tailpipes. Then again, he’d never known either Hibari to let much of anything get in the way of their daily routines, including personal comfort.

With few moments’ strain to remember their home number, Dino was soon listening to the electric purr indicating the phone ringing on the other end. Several of those vibrato tones past without answer, and eventually he was directed to a recording of Kyouya’s mother on the answering machine. “‘You have reached the residence of Hibari Yachiko and Kyousuke; we are unable to answer the phone right now, but if you leave your name and number we will return your call as soon as we can. Thank you.’ After the tone, please record your message,” followed by the mandatory beep.

“ _Buon giorno_ , Hibari-san; it’s Dino. Just wanted to let you know your son came to stay with me last night. He’s not feeling well right now, but he’s safe and I thought I’d bring him home later this afternoon after he’s had a bit more rest.” Dino lowered his voice a couple decibels, “And when I get there, I need to discuss a couple things with you about what happened to him last night. Until then, _adio_.”

“You sure it’s OK to leave it like that, boss?” Romario asked from the driver’s seat.

“Not much else I can fit in a message,” Dino shrugged. “Anyway, have you ever used this…Flu-Away medicine tea?”

“Looks like a knock-off of Thera-Flu, boss.”

“I…don’t know what that is.”

“Eh…hot Alka-Seltzer without the bubbles?”

“Yuck.”

“I dunno; the menthol steam is nice. Dunno if that Flu-Away stuff has that feature, though.”

“Guess Kyouya will just have to be a guinea-pig, then… Crap, I just realized, I don’t know if he has any medicine allergies.”

“That kid? Forget about it.”

“Well, you never know.”

“If he has one, he’s got the wits to say something, right?”

“True.”

Back at the hotel, Dino and Romario split at their adjacent rooms. Dino found himself fancying a catnap after his fitful night and frosty morning. But the first order of business was of course giving the cause of said fitful night a bit of over-the-counter TLC, and perhaps a bit of his lunch leftovers if his pupil’s stomach was up to it.

Scratch that; he wasn’t sure if his own stomach was up to that job. Well, the antacid could wait for the few minutes it took to steep and serve the Flu-Away medicine drink.

He hadn’t noticed while the token microwave percolated the water, but in the oppressive silence that hung over the room while the brew steeped, Dino thought he heard a soft gasp, perhaps a stifled hiccup. He trained his ears on each and every door in rotation. As soon as his radar came back for another sweep of the front door, he heard it again.

*Hic*

This time a scarcely audible exhalation, something between a moan and a sigh, followed the short, sharp, gasping noise. By this time, he had a pretty good idea of its origin. He just couldn’t believe it. The bewildered blonde boss crept to the bedroom door and turned the knob as gingerly as humanly possible, trying to catch a glimpse of the phenomenon in action before its source discovered him. Through the crack in the door, he spotted his understudy prostrate in bed, face mashed into the pillow, back and shoulders heaving in rhythmic spasms coinciding with alternating fluid-choked gasps and tiny, muffled moans.

_He…is he crying…?_

_Hibari-bloodthirsty-street-fighter-Kyouya…is crying!?_

Dino may as well have seen water wrung from a brick.

“Kyouya, are you OK—?”

“AGH—fuck—!” Kyouya violently ejected his face from the cushion to see who just startled him, and awkwardly snapped his head to face the other direction as soon as his eyes caught his Dino’s. He briefly hacked and coughed, making even Dino cringe at how excruciatingly abrasive it sounded. Raspy voice wavering as he struggled to reclaim his veneer of composure, Kyouya remarked, “…didn’t hear you come in…”

“Um, I, uh…I’m steeping some of that…Flu-Away tea for you in the kitchen.”

“…’k…”

“…Why are you crying?”

“Damn it, I…the fever’s just…making my eyes water,” Hibari lied feebly, evading as usual. “Leave me alone.”

“I get the hint, but I can’t just leave you like this. Come here,” Dino sat on the bed next to his _kohai_.

“If you can take a hint, move,” Kyouya chided, his voice rapidly breaking against the pressure of his frustrated tears. Dino, however, pushed forward in typical fashion whenever Kyouya’s resistance was so clearly on its last crumbling leg.

“In the world I come from, the injuries I saw on you last night are sadly not that uncommon, and I know from knowing victims that the cause is one of the worst experiences any human being can live through.” Despite Kyouya’s struggling, Dino pulled him up and wrapped him in a strong but warm embrace. “Tell you what: since you’re running a fever, we’ll just call this sweat. Nobody’s around to say otherwise. Just ‘sweat it out’ here on my shoulder.”

“The hell do you know…” Utterly out of character, Kyouya finally broke down and wailed, “That’s just it: I didn’t survive! I died 3 times! And every time he brought me back in the same humiliating position for another round!” He gasped and roared as loud as his sand-papered throat would let him, “I HATE HIM! I wanna gouge out his eyes and drown him in a pool of his own blood!”

“OK, ok, the walls are thin. Now…who’s ‘he’?”

“You even need to ask? Ugh…I still feel gross…” he sobbed, “First it was _sakura_ , now my blood is infested with his pets!”

“…Dr. Shamal?!”

“No, you idiot, it’s Mukuro!”

“He’s infested your body with…what, now?”

“Snakes…blood snakes, he called them… He made them by physically infusing his blood into mine, and…now he can move my body like a puppet…and control my brain so whether I know it’s an illusion or not, I see, hear, feel, suffer whatever and however he wants me to…” He gripped Dino’s shirt and buried his face in his tutor’s chest. “I…last night was the first time…I’ve stooped so low as to…beg for death… He fucked and killed me so many times I actually started looking forward to dying…!”

“So when you say he killed you, you mean he…made you experience death via illusion magic?”

“N-…Yes… Damn it, I can’t tell! For all I know…he can really kill and revive me at will!”

“Well you’re obviously worth something to him alive—”

“I’m supposed to be his mortal enemy, not his fucking pet!” Hibari broke off with a ragged cough, and continued only with great strain. “…He thinks this is all so damn cute… jacking off in my half-dead butchered body… Honestly, I’m about ready to finish the job myself… if I could just be sure he wasn’t also a necrophile…”

Dino felt his heart drop into his gut. “Then I promise, if a cure exists, I’ll help you find it. Guys your age just shouldn’t wanna die yet. I’ll talk to Reborn-sensei about that guy ASAP.” He hugged his student tighter, but quickly let up as Kyouya’s body flinched from the pangs of his bruises.

Hibari met his eyes with fierce anguish, as if expecting Dino to betray him at any moment. “And if there is no cure?” Dino winced at the thought.

“Then I’ll blow his brains out. It won’t be the first time I’ve killed to save a life… Might put him down it either way.”

“No, don’t…” Hibari sniffled, voice nearly gone, “even if it kills me I have to do in the bastard myself.”

“You don’t always have to settle everything alone; and you really don’t wanna wreck yourself doing it…”

“I’d sooner die on two legs than live on four.”

“Then keep living until you can stand back up. Odds are you have more life ahead of you than I do.”

“…”

“…C’mon, don’t look at me like that. I don’t doubt your default strength in the slightest, but you gotta admit you’re hardly in any condition to be standing on your own two legs right now.” Dino ran his fingers through Hibari’s hair and stared pensively at the stock abstract giclee on the wall. “….Sorry if I came across as lecturing you, I’m done now. I’ll just stay like this as long as you need me to.”

“…Not a word to anyone about me crying…got it? Or I’ll…bite you…t-…” he trailed off incoherently into soft, voiceless weeping against his mentor’s chest and carried on unto exhaustion.

 

Several hours passed like minutes in sleep, and before he’d quite breached his lingering mental fog, Kyouya was back in his own freshly-washed clothes and in the homestretch of his ride home in Dino’s Ferrari. Now and then he was fairly sure he felt vigilant glances alight on his body from the blonde big-brother figure he could now almost bring himself to acknowledge as such. Then again, he didn’t really care. Faded nightmares gnawed on his brain alongside the persistent throbbing pain and tongues of flame; his stomach was still in a queasy knot not particularly helped by Dino’s characteristically clumsy driving; caustic film still clung to his vocal folds and seeped down precariously close to the fork in his bronchial tubes; and the rest of him felt laden, beaten, pulled, and battered like dough. It made him rather enervated company. Partly for the sociable stallion’s sake, but mostly for the sake of a less stomach-turning ride, he privately bemoaned Dino’s decision to give him the reclining front seat and take the wheel himself rather than let Romario drive and have him lay back in the front seat, presumably to…spare his student an awkward ride next to a friend of a friend 30-something years his senior? He didn’t have the energy or motivation to figure it out. In any case, they’d just pulled up to his home’s front gate, unscathed as far as he could tell.

At the bell, Hibari-san opened the door to the young blonde Italian man with her son hanging off his shoulder like a wet towel.

“Ah, thank goodness. I just got your message an hour ago, Cavallone-san,” she rattled off, hastily bowing and meeting Dino’s eyes for less than a second.

“Good afternoon _, Signora_ Hibari…” Dino trailed off, noting that thanks to a perfect storm of tunnel vision and ruthless efficiency of communication with non-family members, Hibari-san had already subconsciously relegated him to the status of a wall fixture. Dino chuckled inwardly, counting his blessings for being ignored rather than struck as was more in her son’s nature.

“Kyouya, are you alright?” The petite queen bee in a silvery winter kimono hovered all around her son as if he were a delicate flower—rather droll from Dino’s perspective, not just because Kyouya was anything but delicate, but because as far as he’d seen previously, she was normally as cool and aloof as her progeny. Her face and tone still betrayed very little in the way of fretfulness. “Are you in there?” she titled his head up so his dark-ringed, glazed eyes met hers. She felt his forehead, “Wow, that temperature could fry an egg.” Kyouya sluggishly kicked his shoes aside and stepped heavily onto the _tatami_ using Dino’s shoulder for leverage.

“I’ll be fine, mum; just the flu…” he murmured hoarsely, brushing by his mother and staggering in the general direction of his bedroom. “Good night.”

“Do you need any water or medicine first or…” she soon fell as silent as her son, who evidently was already asleep on his feet. Hibari-san’s eyes followed Kyouya until he faded into the dark corridor, and then mumbled, “That’s kind of an odd walk… Ah, Cavallone-san, you had something to discuss with me?” She turned back to Dino, deadpan but for her slightly brooding eyes.

“Um, yes, so…let’s discuss this somewhere that Kyouya won’t hear. It’s a bit of a touchy subject right now.”

“…Very well, I think the den will suffice. Would you care for some tea? Oh, but it might be a bit strong for Westerners’ tastes.”

“That’s all right, I’ll pass.”

Dino tiptoed into the den, a unique room even by the standards of traditional compounds. The rice paper screens, sliding doors, and wall-embedded storage spaces were girded with richly amber-varnished cedar. The lintels for the sliding doors and the cabinet doors were inset with vertical side-by-side rods of bamboo, still in its raw, segmented form. Above and behind the many small flower arrangements and pieces of chinaware sitting on the cupboards, a trio of arched mirrors was set into the wall. And at the front corner of the house, where the walls at least briefly became solid, a large TV set stood low on a short corner table. And in the middle of the room, surrounded by mute plum-colored cushions with red and silvery embroidered chrysanthemums, was a large wood-burning _kotatsu_ embedded in the floor, the telltale sign of an abode old enough to be called historic. This _kotatsu_ had seen many of the walls around it replaced multiple times a piece. Some of the latest on the interior bore Zen designs and huge, 1-2-character calligraphic works whose darting, slashing (and perhaps slightly amateurish) style pointed to none other than the sleeping tiger curled up in the bedroom at the other end of the house.

Threat of said tiger’s fury in mind (though, come to think of it, he needn’t have worried given the boy’s present illness), Dino skirted around the _kotatsu_ in measured steps, and gingerly took a seat on—“ **MREOWR** ”—a cat. Hibari-san returned to find Dino up on one knee, arms in the air with a face screaming childlike, panicky denial of culpability.

“Did you find one of the cats?”

“Yes, I most definitely found a cat… Which one was that?”

“The black one with white paws is Mouser, and the orange one is Cheese.”

“Guess that was Cheese, then… Did Kyouya name them?”

“Cheese, yes. Mouser came with the name when we adopted him,” Hibari-san replied matter-of-factly, kneeling politely on the _zabuzon_ (*T/N: cushion for sitting) opposite Dino and drawing a long draught of tea, culminating some private reception ritual she’d instilled in her mind years ago. “Now, to business,” she lowered her voice, “what happened to Kyouya?”

“Well, the details are complicated and he hasn’t been very forthcoming about all this, but…apparently last night he got into a fight with someone who’d…drugged him or something… The best I could make of what he said and the injuries I saw on him while I helped him clean off…he must’ve been pretty violently…sexually tortured. But he escaped and got caught in last night’s freezing rain… and I guess the combined stress of the assault and exposure made him sick, too sick to move by the time I got there. Why he called me instead of you, I don’t know. In any case, I think he should probably see a doctor, if not for the flu then for a second opinion on the bruises and lacerations, perhaps a little therapy…”

Hibari-san pursed her lips. “Who did this and where can I find the bastard?”

“His name is Rokudo Mukuro. I don’t know if he’s mentioned him by name before, but Kyouya and I and several of his classmates have had previous run-ins with the guy and most of them ended badly for us. He’s somebody we can’t beat unless we all come at him together. Trust me, _signora_ ; this guy’s abilities are uncanny. Remember that time when Kyouya was in 8th grade that he went missing for a couple days and turned up in the hospital with a bunch of broken bones?”

“How could I forget?”

“It’s the same guy, and he did what he did about 4 years ago right after busting out of jail the night before he was slated to be executed. I don’t know if you believe in demons, but that guy is the closest thing you’ll ever come by to a real demon.”

“What on Earth are you talking about?!”

“I…look, it’s hard to explain the details without getting you involved in something that could endanger your entire family, but—”

“If this is about the Mafia, I don’t care. I’m related to _yakuza_ and I’ve fought _yakuza_. Yes, that was a while ago, but I’ve kept up my training.”

“No amount of training would prepare you to deal with what your son lost to. It’s not a hand-to-hand fighting skill. I’ll be honest, I seriously doubt I could take the guy myself if I didn’t ambush him.”

“I can do strategy too. Don’t underestimate my pride as a mother.”

Dino pinched the bridge of his nose. “…Consider your son’s pride. He’s already vowed revenge against this guy several times over. He has abilities he can protect himself with and he has the potential to fight the guy. He’s not going to die, but he’s got a hell of an uphill battle ahead. At this point all either of us can do without making the situation worse is to be supportive. I know Kyouya comes by it honestly, but I implore you, please, don’t enter this battle. It has nothing to do with your age, your gender, your gang affiliation, or anything; if you don’t know what ‘Flames’ are,” Dino finger-quoted, “and how to use them, you won’t be able to make a single move. That man is perfectly capable of murder; we’re just lucky it hasn’t entered his plans around us yet.”

Hibari-san heaved a frustrated sigh and let her head fall into her open palms. “…I don’t know what’s worse: not know what’s wrong with your son or knowing just enough to suffer with it unable to do anything.”

“I fully commiserate, _signora_. But I should probably be going. The only suggestion I can give is, if either you or Kyouya see a guy about Kyouya’s age with dark blue hair cut in a weird pineapple shape, call me. Also, keep an eye out for people Kyouya knows but who aren’t acting normally. He likes to disguise himself to get closer to his targets, and let’s just say he’s really damn good at matching appearances.” Dino stood and backed toward the door. “I’ll go say good-bye to Kyouya if he’s still awake.” After a pause to recall Japanese etiquette, he bowed out of the room.

“I’ll be along momentarily… I just need to let this all sink in.”

Dino padded gently around to the other end of the U-shaped house that terminated in his student’s room. The door was cracked just wide enough for a small animal to slip through, like a cat. Not surprisingly, a peek through the door revealed Kyouya on the right-hand side of the room, and apparently fast asleep in his futon with his quilt devouring him whole and both cats curled up together against the long, narrow lumps that Dino surmised were the infirm boy’s legs. Dino silently waved. Unexpectedly (and somewhat eerily) hand crept out from under the covers and feebly waved back.


	5. Ex Marks the Spot

Hibari woke to the sharp patter of wintry rain on the roof and grudgingly greeted another day of feeling tumbled violently in a hot dryer. As a bonus, the flames licking at the top of his throat yesterday had given way to a raw, blistering sting at the top of his sternum, like someone tried to gouge out his trachea with an icicle.

_Damn…it’s moved into my chest… probably need antibiotics to get rid of it now… shit…_

He coughed and stretched to reach the thermometer on the pan next to his bed with water and medicine. Due to years of being sanitized in everything from rubbing alcohol to vinegar to hydrogen peroxide, it left a horrendously bitter, almost ammonia-like taste in his mouth as he slid it in under his tongue. After about 10 seconds, it beeped, calling attention to its tiny, fading digital display that now read 39.6°C (~103°F). He groaned in consternation and rolled over.

_Same as yesterday…_

A knocking on his door waxed and waned with his consciousness.

“…What?” Kyouya mumbled hoarsely.

“Visitor,” his mother replied distractedly.

“…If it’s Ryohei, punch him out for me.”

“No, it’s Gokudera-kun,” and then she added very quietly, “I think.”

“…You think…?” A red flag perked up in his mind.

“Nothing,” she mumbled, and then directed in the visitor somewhat coldly. “He’s in here. If either of you need something, I’ll be out back.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Gokudera, with slightly soggy pants legs, bowed slightly and remained at the door until she was well down the hallway. “Hey, birdbrain,” he donned a familiar disdainful look, sliding the door shut. “Once again, you look like hell. I thought idiots couldn’t catch the flu.”

“Colds, you moron…get your urban legends straight,” Hibari rasped humorlessly.

“Ironically the real life explanation for the phenomenon holds pretty well for you. They say the phrase comes from how idiots don’t realize they have one until it gets worse or they give it to somebody else.”

“Insults upon injuries…are the last thing I need right now,” Hibari coughed. “…I mean, god, why don’t you just tell me…you banged Shit-Pussy 6 ways til Sunday…while I was stuck out in the freezing rain the other night.”

Hibari thought he heard a snort, but when he went to stare daggers at him in dismay, Gokudera just blinked at him with saucer-like eyes.

“…Wow…jeez, man, didn’t know you were so sore about that.”

“Sod off. Just…just sod right off,” Hibari’s voice strained until he croaked on the last syllable. In displeasure he showed his silver-haired ex his back.

“Alright already; I came because I heard you had the flu and I got a little worried because I remembered you don’t do well with respiratory infections.” He sighed and got up on his knees as if ready to kowtow, and proclaimed as if going through scripted motions, “I’m sorry, Kyouya.”

The succeeding silence lasted precisely 2.57 seconds, and then in less than a quarter of that time, Kyouya flipped over, slammed Gokudera head-first into the ground, and jumped on top of him with one tonfa against his Adam’s apple and the other reared back ready to strike.

“WHAT THE F—?!” Kyouya promptly thrust the tonfa at his neck up under his jaw.

“How did you find my house?” Hibari demanded in a deadly whisper.

“What are you…” the captive protested through gritted teeth.

“Drop the charade, Mukuro,” the prefect growled. “Gokudera has never, EVER, even in the middle of fucking, called me ‘Kyouya.’ I’m only gonna ask one more time before I bash in your skull. How…did you find…my house?”

Mukuro sighed heavily and allowed the face of Gokudera to melt away from him in a cerulean-tinged mist. “Fu, alright, you got me. Don’t hurt Nagi here, OK? I asked her to ask that idiot Ryohei on pretense of delivering today’s schoolwork to you. Incidentally, I was thinking about apologizing for going a little overboard the other night, but…you seem to have taken your revenge already.”

“What revenge? What could I have possibly done since the night before last?” Willfully allowing flecks of his virulent saliva to grace the monster’s muzzle, he hissed, “For that matter, how could I **ever** adequately punish you for how you humiliated me in less than 48 hours, short of dragging you behind my motorcycle until you disintegrate?!”

“Harsh, yo… Anyway, I would’ve come in person had I not caught the flu but evidently you’re the culprit anyway. Go ahead and laugh; I’m at home curled up in bed as miserable as you are.”

“No…just… No. You are not miserable, and you are not sorry. And if you weren’t using Nagi…I would break your goddamn neck right here.”

“Just hear me out, OK?” Mukuro’s eye twitched. Hibari’s veins rose beneath his skin and began to slither between his dermal layers over every inch of his body. “I had only the best intentions in mind.” A handful of his blood parasites crept up his jugular and disappeared into the inner recesses of his head. “Considering your history and your *ahem* choice of weaponry, and of course your sexual leanings, I honestly thought pain turned you on,” Mukuro shrugged with the brittle, plastic countenance of a career politician. Before Hibari could protest the absolute absurdity of Mukuro’s testimony, sharp prickling sensations danced across his raw trachea and immediately turned to a horrid bulging, choking sensation. “A mistake, yes, but in the grand scheme of things of lesser importance to my real gift to you.” Overcome with a powerful urge to vomit, Hibari locked up, trying desperately to keep the demon from righting himself and overthrowing him. “You probably won’t appreciate it until you’ve seen the consequences of not having it later, but I’ve given you my seal of protection.” The swelling mass in the back of his throat worked its way up to the back of his mouth, filling his nasal passages with a familiar metallic smell so acerbic it made his eyes water, and flooding his mouth with the pungent, dry taste of blood. As if by design he wretched and a ropey mass of bloody, clotty snakes unraveled down his chin. “You’re safe now, as payment for giving me a good time. Now please, show your benefactor some gratitude. **Drop the tonfa.** ” The insidious tiny serpents inside him worked their way into his Hibari’s hands, weaving knots between his knuckles that pulled taut and pried his rigid digits open one by one until the tonfa simply slid out. Struggling to breathe past the animated clot stitched to the sides of his throat, Hibari soon followed his tonfa to the tatami, gagging and shuddering. Mukuro smirked. “Good boy.”

With a self-satisfied snap, Mukuro’s slithering servants forced their way back under Hibari’s skin, dispersed from his hands and feet into a fairly uniform subdural mesh of bulging, writhing venous structures over his entire body. Lacking orders, they seemed to content to quibble and frolic amongst themselves, especially in his neck, abdomen, and groin where his skin was warmest, his guts closest to the surface. Quite out of patience with Mukuro’s unabashed attempt to once against simultaneously torture and arouse him, Hibari lashed out with the limbs least incapacitated. “Where do you… get off… telling me this… is for my own **good**?!” he grunted through gritted teeth, punctuating the last word with a kick to Mukuro’s shins.

“Sssss…” Mukuro clutched his bruised leg, sucking through his teeth. “You little demon, you can kick that hard even when subdued by my snakes and sick? Get back in bed.” On command, though Hibari fought until his muscles trembled, he clambered back onto his futon and laid out stiff as a board. “I don’t think I’m gonna tell you now. Maybe I’ll just slip it to Yamamoto and have him tell everyone but you, maybe even make everyone keep it from you…”

“What…did you…do to that guy…?” Hibari rasped through clenched teeth.

“Oh, you’re concerned about him? Was I right about your liking Rain-Boy?”

“Don’t touch…my school or…anybody in it!”

“Ku-fu-fu, relax, I’ve only had fun with you so far. In any case, it’s not up to me whether your school gets involved or not. Just by associating with me, you and the rest of Vongola, and possibly even the rest of your school, may have already become targets.” The numeral six in his eye boring vindictiveness into his captive soon glazed over with apprehension. He sighed, “Even with my security measures, protecting you all while I’m hunted down myself is going to **suck** , so… I’ll just extract a little reimbursement while I talk.” He clenched a fist and suddenly every snake in his victim’s body froze solid. Slowly, ominously, one finger unfurled like a scorpion’s tail, tapped Hibari’s sternum, and started to draw a serpentine path down his torso, popping the buttons off his pajama shirt as it went. “What do I wanna squeeze?” His finger touched the hem of Hibari’s pants and pulled it down slightly. Hibari’s shaky breaths caught behind his palette. “Ku-fu, I don’t intend to repeat the other night, child… Nonetheless, I would like to see your face when you cum once more. It’s around here,” his finger traced circles on his abdomen below the navel, “isn’t it?”

Hibari cringed; he could swear he could feel the snakes turning their heads inside him to follow Mukuro’s finger. “Don’t…!”

“Found it,” Mukuro grinned and made a pinching gesture over the spot.

“Ahn!” The snakes swarmed to his core and started to squeeze his prostate. Hibari arched his back, trying to escape the tingling inferno propagating up his spine. The snakes that couldn’t fit comfortably in the pit of his stomach were all too eager to hug other organs and muscles further afield. Hibari’s face locked mid-voiceless-scream, his wide-open mouth twitching, his flexed hands clawing.

“Alright, listen up, yo: last time I was in the Realm of Shura, I really pissed a guy off. His name’s Vepacitti, by the way. I didn’t think he’d follow me to another realm, but that’s what Shura does, I guess. It makes you vengeful. Anyway, he likes to kill his enemies with their loved ones by replacing them with his hackneyed imposters. Oh, and,” Mukuro crawled on top of him, one hand hoisting Hibari’s right thigh and the other grinding its heel into his loins, extracting another few fragments of perversely anguished moans from his prey, “he’s not above this sort of exploit—!”

“HYA!”

*WHACK*

“UFF!”

*THUD*

Kyouya’s trapped breath slowly escaped in a trembling sigh of relief. The writhing fiends binding his innards instantaneously dissipated and all the queer pangs arching his back, whitening his knuckles, and twisting up his face melted away. Blinking away the blur from trying too hard to grit and bear it, he saw his mother, with her well-worn pair of ebony _tonfa_ in hand, standing over Mukuro’s unconscious body.

“Get off my son, you sleaze,” she hissed at the unconscious body, heaving it aside with one hand.

“Th-thanks mum…” Kyouya panted and turned away in embarrassment.

“Are you OK? What in the world was wrong with your skin a minute ago?”

“It…” he peaked over his shoulder, still concealing part of his face, “it’s complicated, but…it’s the same reason the guy you just knocked out used to look like Gokudera…and now is a girl.”

“What—what the—…!” her eyes darted back and forth from her son to the unconscious girl, equal parts baffled and horrified.

“I can’t explain. Just…there’s nothing else you can do, so…thanks.”

“What about the girl? Do you know her?”

“Well enough to know she’s just a pawn…of that pineapple-headed freak you just saw…”

“…Mukuro?”

“Dino told you?”

“Yes, a bit.”

Hibari sighed heavily, “Well, then…yeah…that was Mukuro. And this…could you…give us a minute alone?” Kyouya heaved himself up into a slumped sitting position, his breathing growing more laborious. “I’ll wake her up.”

“I’ll stand outside the door, but not a step further until I know he’s…she’s gone.”

“Whatever, that’s fine.” After a pause, his mother warily backed out in fits and starts until she was past the sliding door. She pulled it shut and waited with baited breath and firm grip on her _tonfa_.

Inside, Kyouya took the rag soaking in the pan of water next to his futon, wrung it out, twirled it into a rope, and whipped Chrome across the face with it.

“Ouch! What was…where am I?” Chrome sat up and looked around, momentarily lost in the calligraphy plastered all over the walls before her eyes stumbled upon a clearly fatigued Hibari glowering at her from under the shadows of his bangs. “Ah! Cloud man! Am I…in your house?”

Kyouya beckoned her closer. She obeyed. His eyes narrowed, receding further into their dark-ringed sockets. “Tell Mukuro when you get back,” he growled, just above a whisper, “if he steps foot on this property or approaches my family ever again—I don’t care if it’s your body or his—I’ll eviscerate him with his own trident. Buddha help you if he sends you again…” He let his head drop and pointed at the door. “School’s a 20-minute walk due west of here. Get out.”

“…Uh…mm…” Chrome shamefacedly bowed out and shut the door behind her. She bumped into and apologized profusely to Hibari-san, whose suspicious glare followed her all the way to the umbrella stand by the front door. Satisfied with the front door slamming shut, Hibari-san stepped back into her son’s room, finding him in the same position Chrome left him.

“She’s gone. Are you alright?”

“…Hn…” he remained hunched over, hoping he made it abundantly clear just how physically and emotionally drained he was. His mother sat down in the rolling chair at his desk and folded her hands, apparently with important business to discuss.

“Kyouya, I’ve been thinking…” she talked at him, not really expecting him to listen willingly. “I’m much more lenient about this than my parents for obvious reasons, but after what I just saw I have to put my foot down. It’s not that I find your homosexuality intrinsically…morally wrong, you understand.” Kyouya felt a little twinge somewhere between his heart and his gut. He knew from hearing his relatives gossip what was coming. The sinews holding his heart up palpably slackened.

_So she’s gonna try to stop me after all…_

“It’s just that in the culture we live in, it attracts a bad crowd and it’s an open invitation for discrimination by heterosexual people.” Pang: a heartstring unraveled, letting the emotive muscle sag down to his diaphragm. “As long as you don’t make more of an effort to appear normal,” another pang; another string popped, and his heart dropped into the pit of his stomach, flattening a few things on the way, “you’re going to keep attracting these abusive sorts of people.”

_…I’m not ‘normal’? …I invite this stuff? Do you hear yourself?_

“Now I know you’re strong and very capable of defending yourself in most cases, but you take after me in height, so for better or worse you’ll likely be small your whole life. Those traits attract sexual predators on their own,” another twinge and Kyouya’s heart fell through the pit of his stomach and hit the futon. “Being noticeably gay on top of that means… and I agree this is far more depraved than homosexuality itself, but…where people might’ve been sympathetic before, they will abandon you and blame you for being gay to begin with if anything happens to you. Society expects you to be ashamed of yourself. Would-be attackers expect that to be their shield. And most people aren’t disciplined like you; they’re cowards who take cheap shots or set you up.”

_Translation: ‘You’re disciplined enough. I expected you to have more shame, son.’ Isn’t that what you wanna say? ‘You let this happen,’ right?_

The rest of Kyouya’s guts followed his heart to the base of his body.

_I get it, mum… Stop beating around the bush…just say it…shouldn’t be that hard after everything you’ve said so far…_

“As a woman whose hobbies are traditionally male-dominated, I can tell you from watching them that even tough men…when he puts himself or lets stronger, more senior men put him in a woman’s place,” Kyouya flinched, wondering whether she really knew that detail or was talking generally, “people pick up on it and start to treat them like women…patronize and…harass and…attack them…like they’re women…”

_All my life…you’ve been teaching me what craven little bastards people can be…how to make society leave off and go fuck itself…and now you worry that my being gay is the same as poking society’s ass with a sharp stick?_

_What does it matter now, to either of us?_

_OK, obviously something like this happened to you once I get it because you were a girl, but… What the hell, mum…?_

_God I wanna kill something you had that little faith in me? …Or so much  fuck that this is just…?_

_…This is really… damn it making my head spin…_

_…you can’t be serious…_

_…head hurts… really…_

“…This…is too much…” he murmured, and then keeled over into his futon, wracking with chills.

“Kyouya?”

 

For a time so infinite and yet so infinitesimal that it might’ve preceded time itself, there was nothing: just empty, lightless space and him, merely a formless thought. He drifted like a jellyfish in a pitch black ocean—or perhaps more like a fish caught in the jellyfish’s tentacles. Somehow parts of him felt strung up like a puppet. He opened the eyes he’d just realized he had and found the pitch black ocean now cobwebbed with variously-colored threads, about half of which were shades of crimson. Hither and yon a needle hung tangled in the mess. A tugging on his arms drew his eyes. He’d intended to look for the source, but his eyes stopped on his arms. Something about them looked really weird, almost sausage-like in their lack of definition. He turned his hand to look at it and was stunned to find that except for his thumb, his fingers were just lines of stitches in a stuffed flesh-toned mitt. He looked back at his body, unsettled, realizing there wasn’t actually a body under those clothes. The clothes were his flesh and his flesh was cloth. So his eyes hadn’t been playing tricks on him when he noticed his knees looked concave; they were joints made by stitching the cylinders forming the legs so the area around the knee wouldn’t hold as much stuffing. As disconcerting as it was, he distinctly recalled thinking his becoming a giant ragdoll didn’t bother him as much as he thought it should.

A few seconds’ pause and then the tugging on his arms abruptly ramped up. A familiar “ku-fu-fu” echoed distantly in the dark behind his head. He snapped his head back to confirm what he dreaded. As the red threads cinched around his plushy wrists and wove themselves into the fabric of his arms, he saw the trailing ends of the red threads darken and converge to a horizontal slice in space. The slit bifurcated into an almond shape with threads attached all around the rim for…eyelashes? Right on cue, like a numbered ball on a lottery machine, an eyeball tumbled into place behind the slit and wheeled around to reveal a bright red iris inscribed with an upside-down (from Hibari’s vantage point) Chinese numeral 6. He’d really wanted to curse out loud then, but his mouth wouldn’t open. Before he’d even figured it was stitched shut, the threads of every other color converged to a single point below his feet and began tugging against the red threads pulling from overhead. The point bled an inky black somehow even darker than the surround shadows. The airborne stains morphed slowly into deformed arms and hands, 8 of them to be exact, with threads wrapped around every finger. Splintery, cadaverous nails emerged from the fingertips, scraping and plucking a distant, eerie cacophony upon the threads they snagged.

In no time at all both demons launched into a tug-of-war, paying no heed to the increasing strain it put on Hibari’s flimsy fabric body, and the deep, lancing pain it caused him. Tearing sounds assaulted his ears from all sides. He could only watch and silently scream as the stitches holding his limbs on frayed and tore and his limbs separated from his body. He couldn’t tell quite what he was “bleeding,” as it seemed to change every time he looked; sometimes gushing blood, sometimes commercial stuffing, sometimes…hair? Just when he thought the parting of his limbs was the end of his pain, more threads propagated into his body, eventually knotting around his waist and neck. The last thing he remembered was the searing agony of the stress tears opening along his torso and the throbbing in his head as the windings around his neck choked him off.

It was a momentary relief to find his stomach burned simply for struggling to hold down the rice porridge his mom made him drink for dinner a few hours earlier. But pain was pain: he soon regretted waking. This was the worst he’d felt since the first night. He would swear his head was melting off his frozen body if not for the splitting headache assuring him it wasn’t going anywhere. He groped around in the dark for some water to soothe his charred throat. No such luck, and given that the digital clock on his desk read 22:38, his mother was probably already asleep. Oh, well; it wasn’t as if he could call out and ask for a glass anyway.

This called for a test. Could he make it to the kitchen and back with a glass of water? Qualifier number one: could he even sit up? He heaved himself upright and clenched the sheets as his head swam and the porridge welled up in the back of his throat. That was a check, but it didn’t bode well for anything more strenuous. Nonetheless, he swallowed the urge to vomit, flicked on his bedside lamp, and prepared for qualifier number two: could he stand? He disentangled himself from his several blankets and shivered in the open air. Planting his hands firmly on the tatami, he curled his legs up under himself and started to push up.

No good; he had no strength to exert. He’d be lucky to make it to the bathroom on all fours.

_Damn it… The one time I don’t really wanna be by myself…_

_… feel so weak…_

_…almost as bad as the night…_ that _… happened…_

_…how can  so hot and so cold same time…?_

Frustrated, he crawled over to the table in the middle of his room, grabbed his cell phone, crawled back, and bundled back up.

_…Need to vent. Dino, your cell better have a keypad…_

Dino

Say som,ething

Oh, Kyouya! This is new, you texting. Still hurts to talk, huh

…Hello?

Yeah

Slow up. Shaky hands, tiny keyboard

Oh, sorry. Feeling any better?

Worse

Temp’s >40 last I checked

°A° what happened? And shouldn’t you be sleeping?

He knows where I live

You’re kidding…

Came in disguised as Gokudera and started going with me

*toying with me, autocorrectfail

No way…

Mum KO’d him

Oh good, she was up

Wait, he attacked you while your mom was home!?!

 _Bastardo ha i coglioni_ …(T/N: basically “[That] bastard has balls”)

But I think seeing him turn back into Nagi kinda unhinged her

Mum was out back

What do you mean unhiged?

*unhinged

She said “it’s Gokudera, I think”

When she brought him to my room

Now she says I’m attracting his kind b/c I’m gay.

I missed something. Who came unhinged, your mom or Nagi?

Mum did. Said I’d attract more abusivbe men if I didn’t act normal

And society will blame me

 

That’s

That’s pretty insensitive…

Not sure if I should say something…but I really want to.

Well, don’t.

Fine, I won't. I just said I wanted to.

Hey

How am I not acting normal, sexually?

But not during sex

Mom said I “put myself in a woman’s place”

:\ Hell if I know

I guess I could name a few things in a pinch, but…

…

Ah, no, not abnormal things, homosexual things! I mean

...OTL

……

…t(-_-#)

Pizza

Not pizza, pizza

wat

CAZZO YOU FUCKING RACIST PHONE

eto...

Screw it, just hear me out a sec, since you’re already peeved.

Your mom has a...semi-legitimate concern

You don't make it super obvious that you're into guys

But your total lack of response to girls is veeeery noticeable

And I should care...why?

It's nobody's problem, but people who wanna get to you will make it your problem

Your mom’s expressed some reservations before

Well yeah

She bought into the “family evens you out” thing

Then I’d guess this is her way of saying “I told you”

Wao… -.-#

I don’t think she meant it, though.

She let him in, right?

Yeah

Probably shook her pride and made her worry for you in ways she wasn’t used to…

And she tried to explain it away

She saw him on top me making my skin wormy

You dont wanna know

No, I…don’t think I want to. Unless it’d help you

No

…So…

What do I do?

I dunno, you mean keeping him away from home or…?

Just…how do I even sleep like this?

Are you afraid he’ll come back?

Nm, stupid question

But for the record, if I were in your situation right now, I’d probably be terrified.

…

I may have to go into the lion’s den soon

Pardon?

If I can’t fight or retreat, I gotta infiltrate

Kill him while his guard’s down

Hate being sneaky but…no choice

Whoawhoawhoa, no way, you shouldn’t have to do that this soon!

Then what do I do?

Look, I’ll try to stay in Japan where you can reach me until we get this resolved

Hell, if you need to get away, we can pretend to go on another training trip

Jiust don’t do anything rash!

Please, PLEASE give those of us with less to lose the first crack at it

Hurt and sick as you are, you should try to take care of yourself fist

*First

I needed that

Really

…?

…Where’d you go?

…T^T…

G2g

Puking

Aw…I’m sorry

Take care. Hope you feel better!

If you need anything I have my cell with me pretty much all the ttime

Well it might be off during meetings, but I can still receive messages.

Thx

Ciao! *hugs* Stay safe, it’ll get better! ^^


	6. There Can Only Be One

“Hey…Baseball Freak…YAMAMOTO!”

“WAH! Ah-ha-ha…sorry, zoned out,” Yamamoto scratched the back of his neck self-consciously.

“What’s with you today?” Gokudera berated, “You didn’t even say good morning! The least you can do is greet _Juudaime_ when you join up with us!”

“Gokudera-kun…” Tsuna lightly scolded his right-hand man.

“W-well, he is being impolite, isn’t he?”

Tsuna ignored him for the moment. “Is something bothering you, Yamamoto-kun?”

“No—well, sort of, but it’s kind of personal. Nothing you guys need to be worried about, I don’t think.”

It’s not that what was bothering him didn’t concern his friends—actually he wasn’t sure if it did or not. But even if it did there was no way to just tell them. He’d have to show them for them to believe it, and they’d have to believe it for him to believe it himself, even though “it” was now trapped in a clear plastic tub at home.

He gulped, recalling the ordeal vividly. During his morning shave, he felt a familiar pinch and saw a familiar bead of red against the white, stubble-sprinkled cream. As usual, he proceeded as if nothing had happened, trusting the nick would clot by the time he finished. But after a quick splash of clean water lifted away the fluffy white froth, the blood stayed behind, running slightly down his neck while leaving an oddly-shaped glob at the sight of the nick. He craned his neck and nearly rubbed noses with his reflection for a closer look. It appeared to be a loop. Perhaps an ingrown hair caked with gunk from the excised infection site? His thumb and index finger clamped down on it, but immediately released at the sensation of a pulse. He hesitated to grab it again, especially now that he also knew it had the gelatinous consistency of a broth-bloated noodle, but his queasy gut was screaming at him to pull it out. Boy did that ever hurt; for a moment he thought he was making a huge mistake, perhaps pulling out his own carotid artery. But mercifully it was over in less than 10 seconds. What had he to show for it, though? It looked like a long, bloody earthworm with a bulbous head and no segments. He had all of about 4 seconds to ogle the creature before the bulbous end jerked up and snapped at him.

The next few minutes were a bit of a blur, but he remembered slapping the bathroom floor a few times trying to catch the thing as it wriggled and bounced and threw itself about on the tile at speeds revoltingly reminiscent of a cockroach. At last he trapped it under a cup long enough to grab it, run with it at arm’s length to the kitchen, and throw it in a plastic bag. But as soon as he thought it was all over, the tiny monstrosity unsheathed its fangs and started nipping holes through the plastic. Thinking faster, Yamamoto grabbed the first solid container he could find with a lid and chucked the beast and its plastic chew toy in, slamming the lid down and holding it for a few seconds while he satisfied himself that the popping sounds he heard were simply the critter beating itself against the walls to no effect. Against his better judgment, he took the opportunity to look at it more closely. It seemed to sense the eyes and fanned its head like a cobra’s hood, hissing and spitting all over again. When morbid fascination finally gave way to self-preservation, he shoved the bowl into the freezer and returned to the bathroom to wipe up the blood spots it left while it flopped around and patch up the hole, or what he assumed would be a hole left over from pulling the thing out. But to his briefly all-consuming horror, where one loop had been before, there were now 3, all of them writhing and thrusting their tiny coils in and out of the cut. There would be no second chase for bloody worms around the bathroom floor; he couldn’t deal with pulling out another one of those little beasts, much less 3. He swatted the bundle like a fly, hoping they’d simply recede. Surprisingly, as soon as he did so, he felt a slight sucking sensation. When he removed his hand the loops were gone and the wound reduced to a perfectly dry garnet sliver. He shuddered; even if these things were helping him, how could he simply accept that his blood might be riddled with tiny snakes?

_Best to just…go to school and…forget about it?_

“…You’re both too quiet this morning,” Gokudera sulked.

“You’re right, I’m probably over-thinking things,” Yamamoto chuckled nervously. “Haven’t had a chance to ask, uh, how was your date with Shittopi-chan last Saturday? …I mean after Hibari chased you guys off?”

“Speaking of that beast, where was he yesterday and the day before?”

“Home,” Tsuna interjected. “Reborn said he had the flu. It sounded like he’d be back in a couple of days, though.”

“Huh, so idiots do get sick.”

“So…about your date?”

“Eh, it was OK. The movie sucked: mind-numbingly stupid. Remind me never to see another movie about a toy franchise. Ever.”

“Heh-heh; will do. How was your dinner?”

“Dinner was nice. Weird, though. She got me to try squid noodles. Those were pretty good actually.”

“You’ve never had squid pasta? How many years of your life have you missed?” Yamamoto cajoled.

“They’re not **that** good, jeez.”

“I could do without them, personally,” Tsuna muttered with a yawn.

“See, _Juudaime_ doesn’t like them that much.”

“But you just said you liked them fine!”

“… _Che_ ,” Gokudera, not terribly happy about being caught arguing for the sake of arguing, strode ahead a few steps and propped the school’s front door for his beloved boss.

“(Thanks.) Didn’t you say something about a drink with scorpions in it?” Tsuna asked.

“Oh, shit, yeah she ordered scorpion ambrosia or something like that. Ack. She ordered it with two straws, but I couldn’t do it. I kept thinking they were still moving.”

Yamamoto blanched. The creepy-crawly subject was hitting a little too close to home this morning.

“Yamamoto-kun, your color looks really bad all the sudden,” Tsuna commented, rubbing still more sleep out of his eyes.

“Eh-heh…just had a really vivid image of the scorpion drink is all.”

"I thought I did pretty good, though. Normally I have the same reaction to scorpions as I do for my sister, for the same reason."

"Uh...congratulations?" Tsuna responded halfheartedly, his attention divided between Gokudera's swelling swagger and Yamamoto's subtle dishonesty. He knitted his brows.

"Aw, Juudaime," Gokudera scratched his neck and buried his flushing face in the crook of his arm to hide his accomplished grin from his boss, "it was nothin'." He needn't have bothered, though, since Tsuna's face was too scrunched up in a yawn to look. Yamamoto, meanwhile, folded his lips between his teeth in a desperate bid not to laugh, and it held him over for the few seconds it took his amusement to turn to vexation. As they parted ways toward their separate lockers, he wondered if Gokudera's saccharine sycophancy piqued Shittopi-chan as much as him.

By third period, Yamamoto wasn’t the only one looking a bit worse for wear. Neither Gokudera nor Yamamoto could stop thinking about Tsuna's last remark before class started, in response to their queries about his immediate health. "I feel funny…” he’d said, with his chin on his desk, “and not ‘ha-ha’ funny…more like ‘donated-too-much-blood’ funny…” Those were the last coherent words to leave his mouth. A few minutes into class and he’d apparently fallen asleep. The teacher, a leathery-skinned, fat-lipped quinquagenarian with more hair left than most guys his age, threw the first gauntlet—a piece of chalk.

“Wake up Sawada! You of all people can’t afford to be sleeping in class!” Tsuna groaned and squirmed a bit, but didn’t lift his head. “Sawada!” This time he didn’t budge. Yamamoto and Gokudera both cringed.

“C’mon, _Juudaime_ , wake-up!” Gokudera whispered, harried, “You’re gonna get your ass handed to you!”

Finally, the teacher marched over, rolled up his teacher’s edition paperback textbook, and swatted the bushy-haired kid over the head.

“Ngh…” his face twitched. His arm finally slid off his desk and dangled to his side like dead weight. But still he didn’t respond.

Gokudera reached over and grabbed his hand, giving it a good tug. “ _Juudaime_! …Tsuna!” He blinked and looked down at Tsuna’s arm, then back to his face, and then to the teacher. “He’s really clammy. Sensei, I’m taking him to the infirmary.”

“Wait a—…fine, yes, you do that. Yeah…a student that unresponsive…” the teacher turned on heel and headed back to his desk, scratching his head and mumbling to himself the whole way, something about how useless students should be fired from school or some such.

Seconds turned to minutes, minutes turned to half an hour, and neither Tsuna nor Gokudera returned from the infirmary. That didn’t bother Yamamoto too much at first, since he knew both of those guys didn’t mind skipping and Gokudera for one was probably bored half to death of their class material. It was probably good that Gokudera was staying with his other best buddy in this condition. It’s what a “right-hand-man” would do, after all. Oh, but it would eat at him that he didn’t go with.

After about 35 minutes, the door creaked and the students and teacher turned to see who the intruder was. What a shock: apparently Tsuna was back, without Gokudera no less. And that wasn’t the only fishy detail, not by a long shot.

“Are you awake now, Sawada-kun?” the teacher demanded accusingly.

“Oh, yes sir. I feel much better now,” he responded with an oddly cheery, stilted voice, not even quite the right timbre, if Yamamoto’s ears didn’t deceive him.

Yamamoto’s eyes tracked Tsuna all the way back to his desk, his eyebrows knitting ever tighter as he fixated on Tsuna’s newly-acquired gait. It wasn’t quite staggering; it just seemed…floppy…like Tsuna suddenly was an invertebrate or a rag doll…

Tsuna glanced at him.

_A doll…_

Yamamoto had never wanted so badly to be so wrong in all his life. He never wished so hard that he were simply seeing an illusion or hallucinating or nearly anything besides what he just glimpsed. There was no way that could be Tsuna, and yet…nobody else seemed to notice anything out of the ordinary. He alone gasped and nearly fell out of his chair, panting.

_A doll…?!_

This Tsuna’s face was hand-dyed and sculpted with stitches.

 

Yamamoto had seriously debated going to the infirmary himself, but managed to convince himself to wait the extra 20 minutes for lunch to start, biting his tongue and avoiding eye-contact with that beanbag or whatever it was pretending to be Tsuna. The bell sent him fleeing to the roof for fresh air, almost without his lunch. Hunger can cause hallucinations after all, or so he told himself without believing a word of it. He’d just bitten into a piece of _nigiri_ with sweet egg on top when the door creaked. Gokudera emerged from the other side of the door to find Yamamoto showered in egg bits, rice grains, and spit.

“Heh, did I scare ya?” Gokudera sneered lightheartedly.

Yamamoto brushed it off literally and figuratively, as usual. “Ha-ha, yeah, you did!” He popped the remaining half of that _nigiri_ in his mouth and tucked it into his cheek. “So, uh…Tsuna didn’t come back with you, did he?”

“No way; as if I would be eating here without _Juudaime_ if he was OK!”

“So he’s still in the infirmary?”

“Yeah… He was a little more alert once we got there, but he didn’t improve any after the first few minutes. He said he was going to take a nap and that I should go ahead and eat.” Gokudera bit into his soggy meat bun, all too obviously frozen and reheated vending machine fare by its taste. “ _Che_ …figures, just when the battle maniac’s about to come back Tsuna comes down with something. I’d guess he incubated whatever it was a few days and gave it to _Juudaime_ right before he went MIA if the symptoms weren’t so…just…vague.”

“Speaking of Tsuna, I wanted to—!” the bleeding-heart jockey stopped cold when the door creaked open a second time. His swarthy complexion blanched to sickly beige. It was the cloth caricature of Tsuna.

“Ah! _Juudaime_ , you’re feeling better now?” Gokudera fawned over this Tsuna just like the one of flesh. “Don’t tell me you came even though you feel bad: I’d be moved to tears.”

“Don’t worry, I feel much better! That…nap was just what I needed!” Hearing, nay, seeing the grotesque thing talk was like a punch in Yamamoto’s gut. Its stitches stretched with the flapping of the lips such that at times the wedges of bloody crimson satin representing the interior of its cheeks sometimes opened all the way to the ears. Instead of teeth, old drill bits and the tips of flathead screwdrivers jutted from its felted gums. But its voice required no such stretch of the imagination to fool the ear—it sounded pretty close to their Tsuna, and any discrepancies could be waved away by attribution to a cold. If some illusion magic had shaped everyone else’s perception of the abomination to match Tsuna’s appearance, any intervention on Yamamoto’s part would draw more suspicion to him than Tsuna’s creepy replacement.

“Siestas, man, I’m telling ya,” Gokudera continued his needy, puppy-eyed cozying up to the mockery of his boss. “The Spanish have it right. Oh, uh…you forgot your lunch?” Ghastly wooden eyes twitched in their puckered sockets as the usurper quickly mustered up an excuse. Yamamoto was briefly glad that Gokudera and the doll were absorbed in each other. He treasured every second he could go without meeting those unblinking lunatic orbs.

“No, well, I haven’t quite recovered my appetite yet. Mostly I came up for fresh air. I’ll probably eat after next class,” the rag doll languidly scratched the back of its neck. Of course, it was debatable what constituted the back of its neck seeing as the hems of its taupe blazer and white dress-shirt were stitched directly to the skin of its neck and wrists. The only freely-hanging piece of fabric was the myrtle-green tie, and even then the 4-in-hand knot at the top was sewn right to the doll’s throat.

“I’ll…I’ll save some for later and join you, then!” Yamamoto chimed in nervously, closing his bento.

_I might be an airhead jock, but I know food and stuffed toys don’t mix._

The fabric mannequin snapped its head toward him, its hollow gaze bathing him in a cold sweat. He couldn’t tell if the doll’s stare was a poker face or a death glare.

“Then I will, too!” Gokudera followed up, not to be outdone. “You’ll probably be more up for conversation when you get some food in you, right?”

“Oh, uh…no…that’s OK, don’t go hungry on my account.”

“But we can still join you, right?” Gokudera practically pleaded. Yamamoto meanwhile scrambled for ideas on how to salvage his attempt to make the dummy slip up or at least warn it that he would be keeping it under watch.

“At…at the very least we can fend off the hall monitors,” Yamamoto pressed, “or do you want us 2 airheads to leave you alone this time?”

With what from Gokudera’s perspective must’ve been a charming grin, the rag doll replied, “Yes, I’d like you 2 airheads to leave me alone this time.”

Gokudera blinked, his eyes suddenly vacuous windows to his crumbling ego. Yamamoto’s gaze meanwhile hardened, thrilled though he was that the lint-brained bastard just handed him such an opportunity; he stood up.

“The Tsuna I know wouldn’t call us names like that even in jest. Who are you? _What_ are you?”

“Huh?” the expressionless marionette was palpably confused. “No-no, I was just repeating it back to…agree to the…sentiment.”

“Yamamoto, I know better than anyone how hard it is to leave _Juudaime_ alone, but Jesus, he was just joking!” Gokudera exploded. “A-and he’s having an off-day, anyway! That’s no excuse for accusing _Juudaime_ of being a fake!” Gokudera grabbed Tsuna’s hands, bowed deeply, “ _Juudaime_ , please for…” and noticed an odd squishiness to Tsuna’s fingers. His tongue stumbled as his brain processed the discovery, but he quickly rerouted his train of thought back to the proper railings, “…forgive our insolence.” He squeezed the plushy hands harder, but feeling no bones and fearing rousing suspicion, he let go soon after.

Apparently he didn’t let go soon enough, or at least gave himself away as he stepped back. The impostor's gaze fell in increments, and it excused itself in a downtrodden tone, wobbling like Jell-O all the way to the door.

“…You’re right; I am having an off-day. I…think I’m going to go get some water, and then…” it trailed off, opening the door to the stairwell. “You guys just…go back to eating.” And the door slammed, leaving smoker and jock alone between the rooftop and the winter sun.

Gokudera hurriedly shoved a cigarette into his mouth, lit up, and curled up against the radiator next to Yamamoto, shaken. “That… You were right. That wasn’t _Juudaime_.”

“You finally saw it?” Yamamoto asked grimly.

“Saw what?”

“I guess I’m the only one who can see it for now. Dunno why. But we just had an argument with a...a life-sized rag doll.”

“No, way…!” Gokudera grabbed a fistful of his silvery hair near the nape of his neck. “For all I could see, it looked and sounded just like _Juudaime_! Although…” his fingers pulled through and released his hair, “…that does explain why I didn’t feel any bones in his hands. AGH! Shit! How were able to see through the illusion and not me?! What kind of right-hand man does that make me?!”

“Calm down, it’s not your fault. I should’ve said spoken up when I had the chance, but something else weird happened to me this morning, and I wonder if it’s got something to do with—?”

“ **OH FUCK!!!** ” Gokudera jumped up and spat out his cigarette.

“What?!”

“It's like The Body Snatchers! ‘There can only be one!’ What if it’s trying to get rid of the real _Juudaime_? It knows he’s in the infirmary now! We gotta go stop it!”

 

Shoving aside several students and a hall monitor with harried apologies, they barreled into the infirmary just in time to hear a dull thud. When they hung a right through the doorway, they found the rag doll with Tsuna just as they feared. But who was standing and who was lying on the ground differed between them. Yamamoto subconsciously pulled the door shut behind him.

“ _Juudaime_! There’s a—!”

“This thing was leering over me when I woke up!” the standing Tsuna shivered. “What IS it? It’s creeping me out!”

“Oh—heh—well, I’m just glad you managed to take care of it!” Gokudera sighed with relief. “But I guess if it’s you, we should’ve expected it!”

Yamamoto, still gripping the door handle gawped at his best buddy as if he were insane. “What are you doing?!” he whispered frantically. “That’s the doll you’re talking to!”

“Did you take one too many baseballs to the head, idiot? The doll’s on the ground already!”

Yamamoto clenched his free fist and wavered. “…You…” At last, he pushed off the door, locking it, and blurted, “You know what we saw on the roof!” as he dashed toward Tsuna and his doppelganger, and drew his bat-turned-sword. The gently-bowed katana blade speared the air between Yamamoto and the arm of the rag doll he saw hoisting Tsuna’s limp body by the collar.

“YAMAMOTO, WHAT’RE YOU—?!” Gokudera whipped out 3 sticks of dynamite but hadn’t the time, the means, or the wherewithal to light them. His howl for Yamamoto to rethink his grave decision was interrupted by twin blistering screams that rattled the windows and the AC vent gratings. The doll threw itself backward to dodge, but didn’t get out of harm’s way so much as it changed which limb would take the hit. Tsuna and the doll each lost a leg, one in a flurry of hairy stuffing, the other in a font of blood. Yamamoto suddenly felt that same squeamish horror churn his stomach then as it did that morning, only much more severely. The knot in his gut crawled up into his ribcage.

_Bleeding hell…I just cut off my best friend’s leg…_

_Blood everywhere spewing screaming stop screaming please I know I killed you oh crap oh crap oh crap_

_I killed him …he’s dying and I killed him_

Gokudera heaved what he thought was the doll aside, only for his fingers to tell him he was abusing the real thing. The cloth beneath the wooden eyes dampened, the moisture bled down its cheeks, and it blubbered at Gokudera,

“AGH…AH-OWWW…! Why’s my leg off?! What’s happening? …Why can’t I move?!”

Gokudera wept back, “I dunno, I…I just don’t know! Ah!” Gokudera yelped in surprise at the sensation of a squishy paw groping along his back. He snapped his head around. Great god! What kind of look was that, marring Tsuna’s face?! Deranged longing? Rapaciousness? Envy? Spite? “Yamamoto!” Gokudera kicked the Tsuna impostor back and held it at arm’s length, shouting desperately at Yamamoto, “Don’t just stand there, do something!”

“B-But what if I—?”

“JUST PIN HIM, DAMMIT! WHERE’S THAT FUCKING HENTAI DOCTOR?!”

Yamamoto hesitantly dropped his sword and made a break for the doll, only for the doll to sprint on all 3s and lunge right into him. They collided in midair. The now rabid-faced doll wrapped its arms around Yamamoto’s arms and torso, and began to constrict. The pinch-hitter-turned-swordsman hadn’t counted on lengths of stuffed cotton being so ridiculously strong. A few more moments and his arms might well be inside his rib cage!

“Yama…moto…” Tsuna’s eyes, glassy from hypovolemic shock, met his rain guardian’s and he pleaded, “Don’t worry about me…if you have to cut yourself out… I’m not worth dying with!”

“That’s not true!” Gokudera bawled.

“Ku-fu-fu… Well, isn’t this a cozy pickle?” Suddenly Yamamoto’s face cracked a sneer and issued a familiar sinister chuckle. Fire appeared to consume his body. The doll flung itself off.

Gokudera’s jaw dropped. “Yamamoto, how’d you…?”

“Mu…kuro… should’ve known you’d…eventually…” Tsuna murmured with a wince. His brow ridge creased, not necessarily with anger, but certainly with a sense of betrayal and of course pain.

“Shut up and conserve your strength, young Vongola,” Mukuro spoke through Yamamoto while slowly dousing the flames engulfing him. “I’m saving you this time.” His right eye now clearly displayed a Chinese numeral 6 in the center, with a web of bulging veins branching out from the socket across the side of his face. He kicked the sword up into his hands and cast an illusory ice wall across the door to stymie any teachers or students who might’ve heard the ruckus and had access to a key.

Several times Gokudera opened and shut his mouth but not a sound escaped.

The doll circled hungrily on its 3 limbs, continuously glancing over its shoulder, seemingly torn between its predator and its prey. The symbol in Yamamoto’s eye swiveled to a kanji numeral 2. “You’re not much of a fighter, are you? Ku-fu-fu-fu…Tell me, what were you before you broke into this world wearing that abominable form?”

“None o’ your business!” it yelled furiously in Osaka dialect. It sounded less like Vongola’s young boss and more like a hoodlum with a recording of Tsuna’s voice playing over top. It feinted left, but Mukuro caught it with a backhanded _Shigure Souen_ defensive form. His free arm snatched the doll up by the ankle, which he rolled over the back of his hand. The real Tsuna yowled in pain again as his foot involuntarily twisted sideways and became an elbow with a sharp crack.

“Shit, yo, just how many charms did your master put on you?"

"FUCK OFF! Master! We had a deal, where the fuck are you?! WE HAD A DEAL!"

"Relax Tsuna-kun,” Mukuro cooed, bringing his blade to the side of the doll’s neck. Its huge wooden eyes rolled and twitched, and its arms flailed and swiped at the floor in delirious terror. “This is gonna hurt. Like a bitch. But only for a second or 2.”

With one quick swipe, the doll’s head dropped to the floor with a satisfying pillow-soft thud.

“ **AUGKH** —!” Tsuna reached for his neck and his whole body ground to a halt in eye-bulging horror, as if broaching the event horizon of death. But just as promised, it only lasted a second or two. “…Ah… Uh, hey…” Tsuna’s glazed eyes rapidly regained their sparkle, a healthy flush swept away the sallow grey tinge to his face, and he sat up, fully alert for the first time all day. “Suddenly…I feel better.” He felt his shoulder and smiled excitedly at Gokudera. “My leg’s back!”

“It was never gone. This doll is packed with a complex array of potent illusions designed to confuse opponents, weaken its counterpart, and deter its destruction long enough to achieve its goal, to bite its human twin and trade souls with it.”

“How do you know all this?” Gokudera demanded, “And how did you get into Yamamoto’s body? Do you know what this looks like?!”

Mukuro rolled Yamamoto’s eyes. “Ku-fu…I’m sure, but with all the teachers banging at that illusion wall I put up, the explanation will have to wait until the school settles down and young Vongola can gather his _famiglia_ for a more thorough discussion. One of you, hang onto that heap of rags.” He pried open the window with his sword. Sitting astride the windowsill he issued his final warning, “in the meantime, if any more of these toys show up, attack their heads, and whatever you do, DON’T GET BITTEN.” He hopped out the window and pulled it until just his head fit through. “Also I’m borrowing this body for a bit. Ciao!”

 

Taking directions from Mukuro in his head rather unnerved Yamamoto, but it was a damn sight better than standing, bloody sword in hand, and over his friend and charge whose leg had parted ways with his hip in a crimson cascade. Apparently Tsuna escaped without a scratch and now he was headed to…Hibari’s house? He didn’t really get it. He didn’t get a lot of things. And today was doing a pretty good job at making him feel inadequate. But he hadn’t yet lost hope that he still had whatever modicum of charm it was that usually kept Hibari’s temper at bay.

Mukuro abruptly threw Yamamoto back into control at the gate to the Hibari estate. The second story framed by pine and bamboo towering over the stone-and-mortar gate gave off a distinct air of old money, perhaps even samurai ancestry. Their address placard even had a skylark in a grass roundel emblazoned on the bottom, obviously the family crest.

“Well…this is nice, but what am I doing here?”

_Networking: you tell him about today’s attack and ask him about the blood snakes._

“Blood snakes? Like the slimy thing I pulled out of my neck this morning?”

_I respectfully decline to confirm or deny that._

“…Why me?”

_Because he promised to kill me next time I came to his house, no matter whose body I used. Now stop talking to yourself, you look like a damn loony. Arrivederci._

Yamamoto stared blankly at the gate for a moment, and then rapidly shook his head. “…Being possessed is weird.”

Just left of the latch that kept the wrought-iron gate closed was a small button mounted on a tiny white plastic box; a doorbell, as Yamamoto discovered upon pressing it, though he didn’t know what else to suspect. Through the gate, down the flagstone sidewalk between the gardens of rock and pine, camellias and azaleas, and into the traditional-style entryway, he observed the sliding doors move aside and a petite woman emerge. The woman had hair like black lacquer nicked with a few thin streaks of silver here and there tied back at the nape of her neck. Her traditional kimono, colored raw sienna with pale blue morning glories strung across the bottom, was bound by a spruce-green obi with gold and white pinstripes of varying widths running through it lengthwise. Struck by her _yamato-nadeshiko_ charisma, the jock couldn’t help but hastily cinch up his cedar-green tie and button his cinder-grey blazer to hide his exposed shirttail. But as she approached, Yamamoto noted an increasingly familiar face peering through the veneer of upper-crust grace and femininity. As it turned out Hibari looked an awful lot like his mom.

“Hibari-san,” Yamamoto bowed cordially, “I’m a friend—well he’d probably just call me an acquaintance—… Anyway, I go to Namimori High with your son.”

“Let me guess, you brought Kyouya’s makeup work?” she sighed. Yamamoto couldn’t place it, but he got the feeling she was not impressed with his presence. He couldn’t tell if she was bored or suspicious, but she certainly held him at arm’s length.

“Uh…I wish I had,” Yamamoto began self-consciously. “I do have notes he can borrow… But really, I’m here because…” he faltered. How to explain… “I was told t-…” Was he not supposed share this with outsiders? How much did Hibari’s family know? “…I need to talk to him about something that happened at school today…something bad.”

Hibari-san also paused for an awkward moment. “Define ‘bad’…”

“Our mutual friend Sawada Tsunayoshi nearly lost his leg.”

“Hmm… And what is your name?”

“Yamamoto Takeshi, _okusama_ *.” (*T/N: _okusama_ = “madam” or “ma’am”)

“…Come and wait in the foyer. I’ll have to let my son decide whether you’re who you say you are or not.”

“Who I say I am…?” Yamamoto frowned. “I disabled of one of those clone dolls earlier if that’s what you mean.”

“Dolls? I don’t know what you’re talking about. The day before last a man who turned out to be a woman…or was it the other way around…well, ‘it’ sneaked in disguised as yet another man to get to my son.”

“…” Yamamoto strained his brain so hard he nearly missed the step up to the front door. “Whoa…! Ha-ha…almost tripped. Sorry. Did you catch the guy’s name? Was it Mukuro by any chance?”

“So you know him...” Hibari-san asserted accusingly.

“Well, yeah, most of us do—uh, by us I mean me, Hibari, Gokudera, his sister, Tsuna, Reborn…a lot of people, really. Part of the reason I came is because I think he did something to me last Saturday at my dad’s restaurant. All 3 of us were there that night. Hibari left with Mukuro to go fight him and he hasn’t been back to school since.” Yamamoto shed his shoes at the front step. “I heard he had the flu. Is he feeling any better yet?”

“Better, but best you keep your distance anyway,” Hibari-san recommended with a subtle threat just before descending down the long corridor to Kyouya’s room. Yamamoto heard distantly, “Kyouya, there’s a Yamamoto Takeshi here to see you. You should probably check to make sure it’s him, though.”

Shortly, Hibari-san reemerged, followed by her son lagging a few paces behind. His black undershirt, grey heather PJ pants, and disheveled hair contrasted starkly with the neat and prim look he cultivated at and around school. But one look at his unhealthy pallor and Yamamoto was more than happy to forgive the disappointing appearance. He waved halfheartedly.

“…Question,” Kyouya began hoarsely, “How many homeruns did…Nami- _chuu_ hit in the championship game last year?”

“Three: 2 solos and a grand slam,” Yamamoto answered without missing a beat. “Did I pass?”

“One more…” Kyouya held up a finger to buy time, “…what’s the name and number of the first _Shigure Souen_ form you invented?” he coughed.

Again without a moment’s hesitation, Yamamoto replied, “9th form: Mirroring Rain.”

Kyouya turned to his mother and mouthed "We're good."

“Alright then,” Hibari-san nodded. “I’ll be in the courtyard with the bonsai.” While she made for the den, Kyouya beckoned for Yamamoto to follow him to his room, where he climbed back into bed with an extra pillow so he could sit partway up.

“Your mom does bonsai?” Yamamoto inquired. Kyouya pointed out the bedroom door, across the corridor to the opposite wall, which was pretty much all windows from the waist up, overlooking the small courtyard wedged between the wings of the more or less U-shaped house. Therein, his mother sat at a simple marble table surrounded by 3 Chinese-style ceramic barrel stools and gravel, with a scraggly-looking kumquat tree struggling to reach sufficient sunlight in one corner. Atop the table sat a Christmas-camellia in full bloom, with both ruby-pink blossoms and cerise-striped white blooms on the same bush. Hibari-san seemed to have just finished pruning its roots. “Wow, those are nice. I’ve always wondered how they get multiple colors on the same—” Kyouya abruptly tugged Yamamoto back into his room by his collar, slid the door shut, and climbed back into bed.

“Too bright out,” the prefect explained tersely, barely above a whisper, while massaging his temples.

“I…take it you’re still feeling crummy?” Yamamoto began as he took a seat on the floor.

“Mm…” Kyouya shrugged and pulled up the covers. “…Mostly just tired…”

“So…”

“…? So why are you here?”

“Um…did Mukuro do something to me last Saturday? Or to us?”

“…Yeah…a lot,” Kyouya murmured somberly.

“This is gonna sound weird, but…and gross…but I nicked myself shaving this morning and I saw this little loop come out, so I pulled on it. When it came out, it tried to bite me.” Yamamoto fretfully scratched the back of his neck.

“A snake?”

“How’d you know?”

Kyouya sighed heavily. “We’re…infested with them.”

“How—?”

“Remember when I stabbed Mukuro’s hand?”

“Oh. Yeah. What does that have to do with it?”

“He basically fed us his infected blood.”

“…Was that when I licked blood off my thumb?” Kyouya nodded. “So now my blood is full of…little snakes?” Kyouya more or less nodded again. “Is that how Mukuro possessed me earlier?”

Kyouya’s eyes widened. “I know he can control your body and senses with them, but…possess you? As in, like…replace you in your own body?”

“Yeah; actually, that’s what I wanted to tell you. Tsuna left for the infirmary, and then this life-sized rag doll of Tsuna came in and took his place. For some reason, he looked like the real thing to Gokudera and everyone else, but I called it out. Then it went and tried to get Tsuna, and Gokudera and I got there just in time to stop it. And then Gokudera thought the real Tsuna looked like a doll! A-and when I cut off its leg to keep it away from Tsuna, both their legs came off! (…But it was OK because that was an illusion…) Anyway, that was when Mukuro took over and destroyed it and Tsuna went back to normal. …And then he led me here.”

“…Hmm…” Kyouya scratched his chin and inwardly mused on how he’d actually grown a bit of stubble there over the last few days.

“You think maybe…the snakes are why I could see the doll?”

Kyouya shrugged, “… Mukuro did say they would...shield me—us, rather—from his enemy... And he said the enemy uses...dolls and puppets as weapons. ...Wait...” his brows furrowed and his eyes widened. "You mean that bastard was telling the truth?!"

“I-I dunno! But-...so-...then the dolls are after Mukuro?”

“...I guess so.”

“Then why are they after us?”

“Guilt by association,” Kyouya broke off into a ragged coughing fit. "Ngh...shit, so that warning was for real, too... Fuck..."

“Well…at least Mukuro is responsible enough to try to protect us, right?” Yamamoto suggested, grasping at straws for a hint of positivity in their situation.

“Ugh…no, he’s…really not. He’s…saving himself from us.”

“…Guess we’ll have to see what happens if we face our own clones.”

“No…if he can just completely possess us…there’s no point in controlling our conscious bodies…” Kyouya whispered bitterly. “Making us watch is just for torture…”

“It just hit me,” Yamamoto divulged in a quivering voice.

“…What?”

“While Mukuro was in control, he took off the doll’s head. I-it sounds like destroying the head is what kills them, but anyway… He…he could use my _Souen Shigure_ and everything.” Yamamoto’s lower lip trembled. “That doll’s head could’ve so easily been Tsuna. And the blood would’ve been on my hands.” He folded his arms atop his knees and buried his head in them, murmuring indistinctly, “I should be happy that Tsuna is safe, but…I feel like I wanna…well, maybe not cry, but…hit the batting cage hard.”

“Don’t get so worked up…over what could’ve been,” Kyouya scoffed wearily. “You don’t know the half of what **has** been…”

“…Fill me in?”

“It’s…not your concern,” the prefect, in a rare display of reticence, rolled over so he wouldn’t have to face the sentimental jock. Despite the dull pang in his chest, he told himself it wasn’t a matter of being unready, but that to share would provoke an unwanted outpouring of hugs and sympathies and potentially an upset to the school’s discipline at the first slip of the ingenuous airhead’s big mouth. Besides, he doubted Mukuro had any real interest in the baseball-loving swordsman, so telling Yamamoto of the 6-eyed beast’s exploits would serve only to compound his worries unnecessarily. Dino was the only person who needed to know what he’d really endured at the hands of that malevolent magician.

“Hey, we can be partners in this…blood snake thing, at least.”

“No thanks.”

“Of course…you don’t join any groups other than the Disciplinary Committee, do you?”

“The Disciplinary Committee is not a group…it’s my arms and legs…wherever I can’t be present.”

“…Well, Mukuro seems to think we should be in on this together.”

“I think your infection was an accident.”

“C’mon, man, who else can I talk to about this?” Yamamoto made a rather pitiable face, “I’m a team player. I don’t do so hot on my own.” The pleading smile, the subtle puppy-dog eyes, he pulled out all the stops. The prefect initially wrinkled his nose; but the magic in that face could not be countered by an animal-lover.

“Damn it…” Dino came to Hibari’s mind, but somehow, compared to dealing with the big lug himself, referring Yamamoto to Dino left a bad taste in his mouth. “I dunno… I guess you can come to me…alone…when my voice has recovered… But keep it to a minimum.”

“Fair enough,” Yamamoto sighed. Then, after a long pause dappled with scratches, fidgets, and coughs, he inquired, “Totally off-topic, but…do you think Gokudera is bisexual?”

Hibari screwed up his face in confusion. “Huh…? Why?”

“I’m just saying; he did more or less go out with you for the better part of the last year and a half. I don’t think any completely straight guy would put up with gay sex for that long.”

“That guy…puts his heart and soul into everything he commits to…whether he likes it or not… That’s…probably his best attribute…” For a moment, Hibari’s averted gaze looked almost wistful. “Incidentally…you’re lucky so much has happened since Saturday…” he cleared his throat with a haggard hack. “…This is easy to talk about by comparison…”

“What—wait, you already said you didn’t wanna talk about it. Um…did he ever mention what he saw in you?”

“No,” Hibari frowned, confused. Yamamoto looked dejected.

“Oh well…” The mostly denuded foliage outside began to rustle against the windowpane, briefly drawing both boys’ eyes.

Hibari coughed again, “…are you like a _fudanshi_ or something? …Or is it one of us?”

“One of you, or something,” Yamamoto cast his melancholy eyes toward the window. He could see only the dormant plants on the ground very close to the window thanks to the blinds, but they were enough to show the wind was picking up.

Hibari massaged his throat and winced at the pain. There wasn’t much left of his voice. The longer he used it, the harder it was to force out, and the deeper it drove the raw sting into his chest. Plus, he thought his temperature might be creeping back up a bit. Not that he’d complain in lieu of the excuse, but thank goodness for bad weather with good timing.

“(Great, even more rain)… Go home,” he whispered, entrenching himself in his quilt. “I think it’s about to storm.”

“…Storm…yeah, you’re probably right.”


	7. Parley

Fran flicked a booger on M.M.’s clarinet. M.M., after a duly-ignored tirade on the little pomegranate-headed boy’s subhuman etiquette, sent it right back with a shrill tweet in E minor. Its target was big and brilliant crimson enough, sure, but it was also an illusion. So it went right through and stuck squarely to Chikusa’s glasses.

“Oops… Sorry Chikusa…b-but it was Fran’s fault!” M.M. hurriedly passed the blame.

“Hey, that gives me an idea,” Fran deadpanned from somewhere hopelessly adrift in his imagination land, “Our next snowball fight should have blow-darts—OW!”

Chikusa’s glasses, even gummed up with a nose-picking, gleamed white with rage as he ground his fist through the insubstantial pomegranate-shaped hat into Fran’s skull. “Don’t think you can joke your way out of that one,” he uttered in a deadly whisper and plucked the mucosal hot-potato off his specs with a tissue. Then he grabbed Fran’s face with his free hand and squeezed the brat’s jaws apart. “Eat it; tissue and all.”

“Why? You’re not Master.”

“About that: Mukuro-sama left me in charge while he’s sick. Now, either you eat the tissue, or you eat my fist.”

“Boy, that’s some camaraderie you’ve got going, there,” a familiar infantile voice issued from the south entrance to the defunct bowling alley.

“Oh, hey, it’s that other baby! Want me to swing you around?” Fran escaped Chikusa’s grasp and scrambled onto an old bowling ball dispenser.

“Quick fucking around, Fran, that’s Reborn-san,” Chikusa chided, letting some of his anger fall by the wayside. “You don’t mess with him. Anyway,” he turned to the interloping toddler, “what are you doing here? And where’s Ken?”

“We left him sleeping down stairs,” came a much more mature voice with a twang of Italian, and from much higher elevation…at least until he tripped over Reborn. “WAAAH—OOF!”

“Dino, Dino, Dino… Still a greenhorn,” Reborn shook his head and prodded the side of his former pupil’s face with his tiny patent-leather shoes.

“These guys beat Ken-kun?” M.M. raised one eyebrow and furrowed the other.

“Beat him?” Dino clambered to his knee and spat out some of the grunge he inhaled upon his close encounter of the floor kind. “Nah, we passed right by him. He was dozing and we needed to talk to Mukuro, so we let the sleeping dog lie.”

“Of course…” Chikusa sighed, shaking his head.

“I hope you guys can swim,” Fran brusquely remarked, “Last I checked, master was drowning in his own snot.”

“Now hold it. On whose authority are you sending these 2 goons back to see Mukuro-sama?”

“Ours,” Reborn cocked a bright green pistol with reptilian eyes where the barrel would’ve been—obviously Leon. “Tell us where he is before I start shooting the place up. You have 5 seconds…4…3…”

“Ugh…stop it, stop it… OK…I’mb here…” a very groggy, nasally-sounding Mukuro hung languidly from the jamb in the eastward doorway with a wad of tissues in his dangling hand. His voice cracked nearly every other syllable. “Whadaya wadt?”

Dino palmed the handle of his bull whip with a stern cast to his face. “I think you know.”

“…Hibari agaid?”

“And this time we know it’s you,” Reborn reprimanded.

“I’ll even bet you gave Kyouya that flu bug of yours,” Dino added, at which Mukuro snorted.

“Ku-fuh, I’mb pretty sure he gave this to mbe. You thigk I’d be crazy edough to fuck himb feelig like this?” He punctuated his riposte with a loud, wet honk into his tissues.

That got Dino’s blood percolating. “Well when did you get it?”

“Woke up with it Mbonday.”

“Oh…” the embarrassment cooled Dino down a touch, but only just.

“Does he kndow you’re here?”

“Course not,” Dino said flatly. “I came for my own reasons.”

“I just came to find out what the hell you’re scheming,” Reborn shrugged.

“I didd’t figure,” he stopped to cough and sniffle, “…he’d stoop to sendig proxies… Ugh. We’ll talk id mby roomb. …Believe it or ndot, I hab reasods.”

On the other side of the doorway, in the gutted remains of an old auditorium’s backstage area, Mukuro flopped upon his grungy old futon next to a short stack of toilet paper rolls and a waste bin overflowing with used tissues. Dino and his former tutor waited, impatiently fidgeting and tapping their feet while Mukuro burrowed into the linens for warmth. Reborn's diminutive stature put him in sufficiently close proximity to the futon that he picked up a faint musk of sex wafting from the linens. He wrinkled his nose and hoped it wouldn't set Dino off when or if it reached his nose. Once settled, the spiky-haired delinquent muttered, “Lessee…where do I start…?”

“Spare us. Let’s just cut to the chase,” Dino growled, pulling a 9 mm handgun from inside his fur-lined olive jacket and calmly aligning its muzzle with Mukuro’s head. “Here’s what I know: you drugged and raped Kyouya 4 times last Saturday. You also somehow made him experience death at least 3 times. On Monday you broke into his house and tried to assault him again while he was sick. And I’m under the impression from the description of whatever you poisoned his blood with that you intend to keep hunting him down and using those…blood snakes or whatever he called them to torture him as long as you’re able.” Dino cocked the hammer on his gun. “Give me one good reason not to blow your fucking brains out.”

“Hibari will ndever forgive you if you do it, you kndow.”

“Even if you’re right, to me it’s better than finding him in that state again. Try again, fucker.”

“Well, I thigk you udderestimbate his ability to hold a grudge, but let’s set that aside.” Mukuro terminated that tangent with a blow of his nose and a sniff that sounded like he was trying to inhale through a stirring straw. “Ond the other poit…we’re ndot so differet. I’m tryig to give himb the closest thig to a guaradtee of survival agaidst the guy I pissed off last life. …I take it Tsuda hasd’t shared the doll story with you yet?”

“What doll story?” Reborn and Dino demanded simultaneously.

“Look… There’s this Vepacitti guy I mbet in the Realmb of Asura. He’s after mby life,” He paused to snort and hack. "He'll literally use adyone and everyone I kndow as weapods...to kill mbe as paidfully as possible.”

“So you being here is a risk to everyone you know? Sounds great to my trigger finger,” Dino menaced, narrowing his eyes.

Reborn cautioned, “Whoa, there, horsey.”

“You wish: if sombeone else kills mbe first, that person will be his ndew target and everyonde he kndows will be at risk… He’s ndot very bright but he is extremely proud… He regards every creature id every world below the realmb of Devas as trash,” he stopped to blow his nose. “Ugh…Besides, Tsuda still ndeeds mbe, right? Let’s ndot breach his trust, kay? …As I was sayig, earlier today he used a rag doll with a soul-suckig charmb id its mbouth to attack Tsuda. If I hadd’t acted through Yababoto, Tsuda would be stuck id that doll and a dambned soul would be at large id his body… If you dod’t believe mbe, go see the body toborrow or sombethig.”

“Wait, Yamamoto? You got him too?”

“Not idtentiodally, but yeah…himb, Hibari, and everyone who lives here with mbe are all idoculated with blood sdakes… The sdakes let me bind their souls to their bodies…and crowd out Vepacitti’s puppet strigs so they dond’t get possessed or rebotely disabled. Basically, I’mb pre-possessig themb.”

“So what, then, the sexual torture is just a side benefit to possessing Hibari’s body so he stays out of your enemy’s hands?!” Dino crouched down and moved into point-blank range.

“Well aid't that a loaded questiod…”

Dino fired. Mukuro instantly felt white-hot sting ignite atop his left ear. A warm liquid dribbled down his earring and graced his left shoulder with crimson blooms.

“ _CAZZO_!” Mukuro shrieked hoarsely, and abruptly broke into a coughing fit while gripping the side of his head. “…ugh…I wasd’t fidished, _bastardo_! Augh, broke mby fuggin’ eardrum!”

“Trust me, _faccia di merda_ ,” Dino uttered coldly, “It was all I could do not to put it between your eyes.”

“If you do that…you’ll risk mbakig everythig Hibari’s suffered so far mbeanigless,” Mukuro chided as loud as his raw vocal chords would allow. Dino frowned, puzzled, and lowered his gun a few cm. “Look: I’m head over heels for that Hibari. You get it, right, Horse? He’s a true beauty ambong mben… So I’mb takig special precautionds to mbake sure he stays mbine—”

Dino bristled. "Yours?" he snarled, realigning his gun with Mukuro's forehead.

"Whadever, I'mb keepig himb out of Vepacitti's hands ‘til he’s good and dead. Reborn’s heard of this.” Reborn scowled at the mention of his name. “Arcoboledo, you recall I showed Tsuda the ‘5th Path’ ondce?”

“…Yes, I remember your ‘5th Path.’ Very nasty, quite bloody.”

“That was mbe giving about 25%. Mbore than that, with Tsuda's level at the timbe, I would’ve killed the body I wadded to possess. At 100% power, I'd have been a force of ndature. That’s the power I wadda give to dear Hibari-chand.”

“By torturing him?!”

“Yes, that’s how it works…” Mukuro paused to blow his nose again. “…I’ve always said the ‘5th Path’ is the ugliest and mbost dandgerous. Ugly id, ugly out. Oh, and give Ib-Ib… _MM_ …her claridet.”

“What the—” Dino snapped his eyes to the hand that held his gun and found instead an instrument that a pouty brunette in the doorway waited to reclaim. “When did…?”

“Thayks, Frad,” the invalid said nasally.

“No probs, master,” the youth with the pomegranate head called back, twirling a 9mm handgun around by the trigger guard.

Reborn sighed and shook his head. “Dino, Dino, Dino, Dino…been had again.”

“You didn't see it either, shut up.” Dino snarled, paused, and punched the ground. “...Don’t forget, I still have my whip.”

Mukuro got up on his elbows like a teenager at a slumber party ready for bedtime gossip. “Wadda kndow what it takes to endter the ‘5th Path’?”

“Suppose I’ve little choice, now.” Dino detached his whip from his belt and folded his arms with it in hand. “Spill it, _stronzo_.”

“Ku-fuh… It takes several factors… The person has to be sombeonde whose pride is tied to his pridciples such that…he’d risk life and limb for themb… He also has to be the sort…that cand hold a serious grudge… That’s Hibari to a T, right?”

“Can’t exactly argue that,” Reborn commented. Dino growled and nodded gravely.

“So you have a guy with the right persodality… Then you gotta break himb—like, really torture the guy, yo. He thigks he cand spare a few limbs for his mborals? Make himb lose a few limbs… He thigks he cand escape with his pride idtact if he dies? Make himb feel death breathig dowd the back of his ndeck…and then yank it away… Ndo mbatter what, he has to be so utterly trapped that he loses his sendse of self to blind hate… He’s gotta be absolutely ready to kill, die, and go to hell just to wreak his bloody vengeance. …Startig to get it?”

“So basically you take a straight-laced guy with easily-damaged pride and push him ‘til he’s so far gone he’s ready to make a deal with the devil?” Reborn recapped.

“Farther: he has to go rabid as a raging bull, at least briefly. …It’s irodic. To enter the ‘State of Mben’ he has to forget how to be humban. But after that, for a price, he'll be tebporarily udstoppable.”

“‘For a price?’ How much more costly can it possibly get?”

“For starters, assault by illusiod is the safest possible way to teach sombeone to awakend the ‘5th Path.’ Ady other way could cripple or kill himb.” He sniffed mightily, “…At the sambe timbe…the ‘5th Path’ dambages the user’s body. It’s mbinor at first but accumbulates fast if you go all out. You’ll die in a few hours if you dod’t codtrol the release. But I cand teach himb to codtrol it—”

“And you really think this is worth the cost to him?” Dino demanded.

“Well, you thought it was worth the cost to himb to combe kill mbe id his stead.”

“I already answered that,” Dino snapped. Then he sighed and pinched his brow ridge. “Alright, different question: have you any guarantee that he couldn’t live without entering the ‘5th Path’?”

“I cand’t guaradtee adythig… Vepacitti is vastly mbore powerful than mbe and has seriously god-awful fambiliars. I’mb dot evend sure I’ll survive,” He snorted. “I thigk I will because he’s a shortsighted idiot…and udlike himb I cand endter the ‘5th Path.’ I kndow Hibari…and the rest of Vongola for that mbatter…will have a better shot at survival if he cand, too. It’d be less work for mbe…if I could do it to all of Vongola, but he’s about the odly onde with the right persodality…” The ruffian with the 6 in his eye stopped to hack something up into a tissue. “…Ew…”

“What about your gang? Have you subjected any of them to this?” Reborn asked soberly.

“It wouldd’t work; they trust mbe too mbuch. It’s just Hibari.”

“Have you even done this before?”

“Mby ondly prior experience is with mbyself. And yeah, it killed mbe. But hey, I cambe back.”

“You son of a bitch opportunist, you don’t even know it’ll work!” Dino started to unravel his whip.

“ _Cacaseddo_!**” Mukuro shot back a lethally accusatory glare. The space between him, the hitman, and the young Don Cavalogne filled briefly with illusory geysers of fire. “Dod’t pretend to take the quality-over-quadtity standce for his life ndow just because I, your…rival id love apparetly…believe id savig himb at all costs. You dod’t have a mbodopoly on the mboral high groud…and we both kndow you’re willig to take a shot at his pride if it'll save his life, too. I’mb edtrustig you to keep himb sane…because I love himb, he trusts you, and I kndow you’ll take good care of himb… Mby voice is about shot so I’mb ondly godda say this ondce… If you value his life, you’ll keep this whole meetig a secret.” He stopped to throw a short but very sticky and painful-sounding coughing fit. “…urgh…You play good cop, I play bad cop…and if we all survive this, he cand do whatever he wants with mbe. Frad!”

“Master?” Fran leaned his head over the back of the sofa.

“Returd the gud…the _gun,_ ” He struggled to force out the “n” sound despite his blocked nasal passages.

“Heh. Re-turd… Sounds like retard.” Fran skipped over, his enormous pomegranate-shaped hood bobbing.

“What are you…?” Dino started as the fatly helmeted boy dropped the 9 mm into his hands.

“What do you thigk? Codversatiod’s over. Beat it.” Mukuro’s voice cracked sharply on the last syllable. He rolled over and Reborn tugged Dino’s leg. “Thagks to you I’mb ndot godda have a voice toborrow.”

“Like hell I’m—”

“C’mon, _Haneuma_ ,” the baby prodded his former student out of Mukuro’s makeshift bedroom.

“What? But his story’s still full of holes—OW!” Reborn gave Dino a good pistol-whipping to the shin.

“I know you’re raring to go and I know it sucks, but I think we better adopt a wait-and-see approach until we know what this enemy Mukuro’s so scared of is actually like.”

“I can wait. My question is, can Kyouya?”

“Hibari’s a tough cookie. He’ll make it. I don’t even see Mukuro’s little experiment getting very far.”

“You didn’t see the side of Kyouya I saw the other day.” The blonde stopped, glanced around, and when he was sure the coast was clear, knelt down to the baby’s height and whispered, “he cr—he told me he'd been made to beg for death. And that he still wanted it.”

“I don’t know what to say to that… What do you want me to do?”  Reborn straightened his hat. “Mukuro is totally corrupt, but precisely because he's a psychopath, he has his pride. I don’t think he’d drum up an enemy with familiars and act worried just so we’d let him off. It’s certainly no less likely he’s telling the truth than it is that he’s cooked up an elaborate hoax to cover having his way with Hibari.”

“So that’s it then…until this is over, I can’t be anything but moral support.”

“Maybe that’s all Hibari needs. He hasn't expressed any suicidal ideation since then, right?”

“No, but how can just I stand by and let him be abused?!”

“You’re mafia, idiot, you stand by and watch other people be abused routinely. You’ve abused some yourself.”

“Those are other criminals who had it coming. This is Kyouya! He’s a minor, he’s principled, he’s…incorrigibly violent and impulsive, but he’s protected Namimori for years without killing anyone. And most importantly…he’s mine.”

“He’s your…pupil?”

“…Yeah, that. Your student, too. Don't you feel anything for the guy? It can't just be me, right? It's not just still having the-the-…being unable to help feeling hurt and angry for him that makes me a Greenhorn, right?"

“That's it exactly." Reborn halted and stared icicles into Dino's eyes. "Getting so emotionally invested in your family and friends that you can't help but act out to protect them is exactly what makes you a Greenhorn." The toddler's eyes softened a bit as he continued, "That's your strength. You'll never stop being a Greenhorn. At least I hope to god you don't, because that's what makes you one of the few Mafiosi who haven't sacrificed their humanity on the alter of power. But just this once I have to ask: can you act out and risk knowingly increasing Hibari's chances of dying?”

Dino's head sagged under the effort of keeping his livid trembling from turning to tears, or worse, a shoot-out with his old teacher. “……Please. I beg you…Don't start talking like Mukuro to me…Honestly, the fact that you're treating this rumored…nebulous third-party threat as equal to the immediate threats Kyouya has expressed to his own life at Mukuro's encouragement is just…breathtakingly insulting.”

“You're wrong. It pains me to say this, but knowing Mukuro's brand of dishonesty, if anything he's understating the threat in the hopes that we'll let ourselves be distracted by Hibari and get killed in his stead. C'mon.”

"…Wha-…how-…Wait, I'm confused." Dino lagged, scratching his scruffy blonde mane. "That still only works if we don't ruin his plans for Kyouya, right?"

"No, that's if we do tell him. Or not…if you think about it, without additional information, the outcomes aren't meaningfully different. Rather, what we do is of far less consequence than what Hibari does, and as we both know he's fairly unpredictable when he's cornered. Anyway, first priority should be assessing the threat posed by this Vepacitti character."

“But if it's all the same outcome-wise, we should just tell him anyway. Then Mukuro won't have any excuses. And maybe Kyouya will get some closure.”

"Forget what I said about emotional investment. Love makes ya stupid." Reborn threw up his hands in disgust, "Every damn one of you."

“WAAGH!” Alas, Dino never met a flight of stairs he didn’t fall on. Although Reborn may or may not have encouraged this particular episode.

“Y'alright?”

Whether his face flushed with embarrassment or just from the blood rushing to his head, Dino did not illuminate. “Ow… I…we’re not love rivals. Mukuro doesn’t love anyone but himself.” He didn’t seem to care that his feet were dangling over his head at this point. “Everything else is just for show. Or maybe he’s delusional. I dunno. But it’s nothing I’d call love.”

“…Yeah, you’re gonna be fine.” Reborn hopped daintily down the stairs, making a special effort to land on Dino at the bottom.

“OOF!”

“Buck up, Horse. We have a Vepacitti to hunt.”

 

_Damn what happened to the energy I woke up with seriously did I seriously use it all up just walking here?_

_…probably not one of my better ideas…_

_…Least I wore a mask_

Such Hibari thought of coming to school less 18 hours after his fever finally broke. He waved halfheartedly to the prefects at his command as he trudged between the wrought-iron gates, making his lackeys do a double-take. Despite the return of less bitter fall weather, he held his cinereous blazer tightly closed as his skin was still acclimated to the blankets that buried him while ill. Moreover, he noted, the whole uniform ensemble seemed slightly looser than he remembered. Though he really didn’t have the vigor to be doing it, he picked up the pace as he approached the school’s main entryway, anticipating how good it’d feel to flop into the dark umber vinyl couch in the lounge room he’d once again commandeered as his office. Never before had he noticed how much of his visibility, and the control thus accorded to him, depended on his proud carriage and the ability to deflate any opposition’s resolve with his piercing, steely glare. He also came to the unsettling conclusion that with his form stooped in lethargy and his face obscured by his hair and protective surgical mask, he must be a pretty nondescript guy.

Though he was in no danger of being bumped or brushed or swept along in the throng’s wake, he found the morning traffic positively claustrophobic without the usual reverential parting of the sea of students before him. By the time he reached the bottleneck at the door, he’d had more than enough. He broke out his tonfa and pried open a path. Nobody seemed particularly upset by his forceful bisection of the mob despite the chorus of startled gasps and squeals; on the contrary, most of them heaved sighs of relief after realizing who had just passed them by with nothing more than a rough shove. The relative lack of violence in his entry further soured his mood with disappointment. He might’ve enjoyed adorning himself with a few cabochons of fresh blood; if only it didn’t require effort. But he needed that energy to get up to the second floor.

_…Fucking stairs_

_Wouldn’t be a problem any other day Move people damn it Do I have to bite a bitch_

_Agh finally_

When he opened the door to the lounge, the couch seemed almost to sparkle welcomingly. He tromped over, dropped his bag on the floor, and flopped into the vinyl cushions—cushions that had surprisingly little give after all this time.

_Also not one of my better ideas_

_…Don’t wanna go to calculus can I skip calculus my brain can’t calculus this morning_

_Or English can I skip English too my English is workable just use my tonfa when I can’t find words_

_WORDS damn it can’t brain got the dumb so noisy_

_Everything just shut up… too tired…deal…let me sleep…_

Despite the rough landing, he was quick to nod off.

About 5 minutes shy of 2 hours later, the bell between first and second period rang and jolted him awake again. He massaged his nasal bridge, trying to wake up. Not that he’d slept very soundly. He’d had a continuation of last night’s nightmare, a cavalcade of stuffed rag doll people running around, stampeding over top of him in repeated waves as the mob crisscrossed their giant, clay-floored cage. The fence that walled them in, that the mob kept fleeing from every time they got too close, was made of gnarled, tortured giants twisted, stretched, and crushed to the barest semblance of the human form, something perhaps more akin to the trunk of a bristlecone pine. Their grossly malformed skeletons were barely contained in their ill-fitting, leathery skin, the color of an old bruise and textured like a giant acid burn. Disproportionately tiny, milky eyeballs peered up from the bottoms of their cavernous eye-sockets, which were disconcertingly far from level and displaced their seemingly cut-off noses to a variety of utterly wrong locations, say, directly above one eye or over next to an ear. Huge mouths hung agape down the fronts of their bodies, their bottom jaws broken and skewed so their teeth jutted out in wholly unnatural directions. Their arms, kinked and drawn out like woody vines, twisted together to mark the perimeter of the human corral. And worst of all, the ring of tortured, undead pillars seemed to be drawing in, creeping closer until the rag doll people shifted from running around like headless chickens to trying to burrow under each other. They eventually buried Hibari under their writhing, burlap-textured masses, mashing him into the clay turned to mud by their sweat, entombing him and blocking off all light until the remaining slivers filtering through the animated mannequins resembled…the kanji numeral 6.

_What is with these acid-trip nightmares?!_

He shook sleep from his head and checked his watch. The digital display told him he had 10 minutes to get to his next class if he was so inclined. He was not so inclined. Yet he didn’t feel like getting hopelessly behind either. With an ill-tempered sigh he hoisted his body from the couch and lurched over to the cabinet in which he stored some of his notebooks. About the same time, Kusakabe stepped in.

“Ah, Chairman! I thought you’d already gone onto English. Looking for something?”

“Yeah…stuff,” Hibari murmured distantly, his voice still somewhat hoarse. He was too busy staring oddly at something shiny wedged in his Japanese Economics and Government binder. Whatever it was fell out when the binder hit a snag as he pulled it from the cabinet. It was a Buddhist ritual Vajra. “Kusakabe,” he stood up with the Vajra in hand and turned to his subordinate, “What is this?”

“You…ordered me to get you a Vajra yesterday morning, didn’t you? And a bell; I put the bell in the top drawer of the desk because it made too much noise rolling around in the filing cabinet.”

“Tetsu…” Hibari knitted his brows and headed to the desk to look at the bell. “I’ve been out sick until this morning. Who the hell have you been—?!” Hibari stopped cold. He’d glimpsed motion at the doorway from the corner of his eye and looked up. What he saw evoked his last several nightmares in vivid detail and sent a chill scuttling down his spine like a frantic spider.

It was him, rendered in cloth: Its mouth was a slash from ear to ear with obvious x-shaped stitches holding the sides together, and its eyes were painted buttons inset into the plush head with flaps of more cloth above and below to give them an almond shape. It wobbled on its floppy legs, noodle-like arms fishing into its back pockets. And then it lunged with unnatural speed even Hibari couldn’t quite parry, tonfa bared. Hibari and his doppelganger collided with a dull thud. The doll’s momentum carried them both straight out through the rec room window in a shower of glass.

“KYOU-SAN!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It occurs to me that some people might take this chapter as me justifying Mukuro's atrocities. That's not the case at all. His (and all his proteges') sense of morality may be orange and blue and horrifically warped by nihilism, but he's still objectively a source of great suffering for a great many people. I sincerely hope by now that readers have realized that even the things Mukuro says that seem to be supported by facts on the ground should be treated with utmost suspicion of ulterior motives or delusional interpretations. If that's not how it's coming across, please let me know what I can do to make it read better.
> 
> Besides depraved porn, this is a story about people facing bad and worse options, where the perceived worse option differs among the people involved, nearly all information available on either option is compromised, and getting informed is as likely to paralyze the decision-makers as it is to help them move forward. The only possible victory when all choices are only marginally disparate in their terribleness is a Pyrrhic one. Yet most of the time any action is better than inaction, if only to give the formless, gut-gnawing dread some tangible teeth to chip at. Those are my thoughts, anyway.
> 
> Translations:  
> Cazzo = used like "fuck"  
> [Faccia di] Merda = "shit [-face]"  
> Stronzo = "turd/shit"  
> **Cacasenno = basically a self-righteous, judgmental smart-ass; lit. “One who shits wisdom”; Mukuro can't pronounce the nasal consonants properly for obvious reasons.


	8. Fight Pillow

Squeak, squeak, squeak… Chalk whined and groaned as its sharp-chinned 30-something-year-old handler ground its face into the wall of black slate, setting most of the students’ teeth on edge. “…And here we use the identity…cosine 2 theta…equals…cosine… _squared_ theta,” the teacher emphasized, “minus sine squared theta. Now you should notice this looks like another identity we discussed…awhile back…” The trigonometry instructor paused, grabbed her pointer, and whipped the side of her desk with it. A dozen or so students’ bum cheeks snapped together with such force that they momentarily took flight. “Sawada!” Among the several students levitated by surprise, a short one with fluffy umber hair withered in his chair as he realized he was once again the source of his teacher’s ire. “What are 2 other ways you could write the right-hand side using the Pythagorean identities?”

“…Uh…” Tsuna cursed his slow wits as hard as ever. “Um…cosine squared plus 1?”

The teacher’s eyes narrowed. “No. Look, the Pythagorean identities are still on the board. Is there any way you can rearrange the top one that would give you cosine squared theta plus 1?”

“…Uh…heh…”

“Dyslexia does not mean it takes all your brain power to convert your breakfast into poop! Focus!”

“OK, no, there’s…no way to make the expression I just said. I’m an idiot.”

“You’re not off the hook. Give me at least one other possible way to write this expression.”

“Uh, uh, sine squared minus 1?”

The teacher sighed peevishly and pinched the bridge of her nose. “…I suppose you’re getting warmer.” Just then, the bell to change classes rang and students, including Tsuna, excitedly began cramming their notebooks and other materials into their bags. “HOLD IT! No one leaves until Sawada-kun gives me a correct answer.” A cacophony of bellyaching and disbelief filled the classroom, followed immediately by oppressive silence as a majority of the other students tried their best to incinerate the problem student with their glowering eyes. Not Yamamoto, though. He was busy trying to convey an answer he’d just worked out on paper by mouthing and spelling things out with his hands. Unfortunately, even if both Yamamoto and Tsuna knew sign language (they didn’t), the demands put to Tsuna right then had pretty much fried his brain.

_How has this woman gone through her entire educational and teaching career without realizing adding pressure makes it harder to think?!_

_Damn wish Gokudera was in our class_

Just when Tsuna thought he was going to implode under the weight of his peers’ livid glares, the sound of shattering glass diverted everyone’s attention, including his. A distant masculine voice shouted something that sounded like “Roll,” another yelled somebody’s name, a chorus of noises like popping balloons followed, and then all was quiet again. Or at least whatever had made the ruckus has no longer audible above students’ milling about. But by now, the source of the noises was visible to anyone of the trigonometry class who could reach the window.

“Lemme see, lemme see!” “Stop shoving!” “So noisy…*” “Who’s—oh, it’s Hibari-san!” “Who’s he fighting now?” “I dunno; it kinda looks like…another Hibari-san?” “Excuse me—?” “Please tell me you didn’t just say what I think you said! The world doesn’t need another—!” “SO noisy…!*”  “Uh, can I—?” “Will you kids go back to your—!” “There’s something really super wrong with the other guy.” “But they’re evenly matched—WHOA! What was that that just came out of his—?” “This is creepy as shit! The other guy’s, like…boneless!” “Guys, I need to—?” “What are those spiky things floating around—?” (*T/N: Word used is “ _urusai_ ”, the Japanese equivalent of “shut-up”)

“Guys, let me through!” Yamamoto shouted frantically. Startled by the normally soft-spoken boy’s sudden firmness, a handful of other students parted to let their taller peer to the front. Yamamoto threw open the window, letting in the faint percussion of thrashing limbs, and leaned out.

“Yamamoto, that’s dangerous!” the teacher cautioned amid her futile attempts to restore order to the classroom.

“Hibari! Don’t let it—… _Hibari!_ ”

Hibari ducked his rag doll double’s flying kick and launched a left hook with the barbs on his tonfa bared. But like the last several times attempts, he could only land a glancing blow. As Yamamoto’s incessant vocalizations wheedled their way into his ears and divided his attention, he started to miss completely. Finally he risked a sidelong glare in Yamamoto’s direction. “WHAT?”

“Whatever you do, don’t let it bite you!”

“Oh, gee thanks—!” Speaking of which, the doll once again stretched the stitches in its cheeks to their limit, launching itself at Hibari baring its substitutes for teeth—upholstery tacks. Hibari looked back just in time to wedge his tonfa between the doll’s mouth and the base of his neck. Contrary to the doll’s apparently flimsy constitution, its nail-studded mouth bent the tonfa into an ugly V-shape before wrenching it from Hibari’s grip.

From the window, some of the other students voiced Hibari’s thoughts while watching the doll spit out the ragged hunk of metal: “Holy shit!” Then the prefect started hearing things that didn’t make sense. “Did you see that?! Hibari-san freakin’ bit a tonfa in half!” “What are his teeth made of?” “I swear on Buddha’s wanking hand, I will never get on the disciplinary committee’s bad side again.” Hibari would’ve given it more thought had the fight not resumed with him lagging a half-step behind his enemy. “Go Hibari-san! You got him on the run, now!”

Yamamoto caught onto the incongruity as well. His classmates weren’t cheering on Hibari. They were rooting for the doll. The same illusion that nearly cost them the fight with Tsuna’s impostor was in play here too. No one could see the real Hibari was slipping except him. And he could tell by the way Hibari moved that something else was wrong.

Down on the school’s front lawn where Hibari and his doppelganger tore up the dying grass and dirt with their scuffling, the former could feel himself slowing, and not just because of the residual effects of his illness. Adrenaline kept his lingering flu symptoms at bay for now, but no matter how hard he punched, kicked, and jabbed his fabric foe, it felt like he was hitting a firm pillow and taking all the beatings himself. He knew he could only surreptitiously use his flames, spikes, and familiars now that much of the school was watching, but damned if it didn’t look like he couldn’t possibly win with old-fashioned fisticuffs. He started to worry his newer abilities had made his fists and feet go soft. No, he dared not entertain the thought right then. If he could time it just right, the chain in his remaining tonfa could turn the tables. The doll’s flurry of strikes had him backed against a fence, but this was just what Hibari needed. Again, the mannequin bared its metal teeth and lunged. Hibari jumped, kicked back, and launched himself off the fence over his opponent’s head. His tonfa chain lashed the air and ensnared the impostor’s arm. As soon as his foot hit dirt, Hibari lunged forward and yanked the chain.

“Hibari, wait—NO—!” Yamamoto mentally blasted himself for not anticipating Hibari’s next move in time. He knew it was too late.

The sound of ripping flesh cleft the air and silenced the onlookers. Both Hibari and his doppelganger tore their right arms clean off at the shoulder.

Hibari staggered forward, eyes wide in horror. Steaming hot blood poured down his right side and drenched his clothes. The sudden drop in blood pressure made his head swim. He looked back at the doll, expecting to see at least a pillow-like arm on the ground and the doll in a similar state of bewildered agony with stuffing hanging out. But no, he could’ve sworn he was looking in a mirror this time. There he stood in the flesh, a crimson cascade staining his right flank and flooding his shoe. A strange sense of lightness came over him, as if his draining blood were washing his body out from under him.

He looked back at his wound. A tangled mass of red yarn and batting protruded from his shoulder. His remaining hand resembled a mitt, his four fingers a single pouch of stuffed cloth separated by rows of stitches. His vision started to contract and he could feel his mind receding, stepping back to view a bigger picture growing more nightmarish by the second. Had he, in the midst of their exchange, become the doll? Had he already lost? Was he the floppy fabric mannequin to begin with? Maybe both of them were deluded into thinking they were the real one and only one of them could walk away from their mutual encounter alive. What was he fighting for again?

His flesh body landed 2 unanswered blows to his rag doll body and knocked him to the ground before Yamamoto’s voiced filtered through the pounding in his head to his ears.

“Hibari! It’s an illusion! You can still win! Its weakness is the head! You have to take its head!”

 _Illusion_ : the very word brought bile to the back of Hibari’s throat. Illusion magic had screwed him over one too many times. Adrenaline-fueled rage focused his muddled eyes and restored some vigor to his legs. He could feel his individual fingers again, and the swaying figure before him once again became a stitched and stuffed mockery of humanity. But after suffering a blow like this from tearing the doll’s arm off, what would become of him if he took the head?

A flash of insight struck him: perhaps that was by design. Maybe the enemy protected his head by making it appear to work like a stereotypical voodoo doll. Hibari mentally wavered for only a second before steeling himself to receive the doll’s next barrage. He had only 1 shot, and only 1 piece of equipment that would do the job.

He sacrificed his other tonfa to the mannequin’s studded maw, slapped his heirloom spiked handcuffs on the monster’s neck, and planted a foot between the doll’s shoulders for the finishing move. Cold metal tines buried themselves in his throat. His pulse hammered erratically against the back of his skull. The lack of oxygen splashed his vision with bursts of red and silver and, increasingly, a blackness he’d not known since the night he first died. Familiarity with that suffocating night to end all nights was probably the only reason he could keep pulling that chain. He could feel his neck tearing, the sensation of the rest of his body disappearing into a featureless sea of undying pain. But just when he thought his head would explode…

…Cool, sweet, refreshing relief.

He sat hard on the ground and released his caught breath as the headless body of his clone fell in a tattered heap. He leaned back. Both arms were a bit wobbly, but intact. His swimming head at last settled solidly, if a little heavily, on his neck. In the corner of his mind, he registered the bewildered chatter of his peers and underclassmen. He didn’t even want to ponder what they might be saying about that handcuff of his; he just hoped he hadn’t made too much of a show of it.

“Hibari!” Yamamoto burst from the nearest door and rushed to his aid. “Are you OK?”

“I…yeah,” he panted and coughed a little, “I’m fine. Don’t touch me.”

“I’m, uh…I’m gonna grab this,” Yamamoto gathered up the remains of the rag doll. “Mukuro said to hang onto these so we can study them.”

Hibari’s face donned a cocktail of confusion, revulsion, and irritability, and he coughed again. “…Do what you want. Just get it out of my sight.” He clambered unsteadily to his feet. The adrenaline high that powered him through the scrap was wearing off fast.

“Hibari-san!” Tsuna slowed to a jog and then to a heaving standstill. “Are *huff* you *huff* OK?”

“I said I’m fine,” he coughed again. “…Stop crowding around me.” Some of the other students also trickled down to the battleground, but their prefect thrust them aside on his way back to the door.

Tsuna looked from Hibari to Yamamoto to the doll and back to Yamamoto. “Do we really have to keep that? We already have mine.”

“I’d assume so,” Yamamoto replied, slinging the body over his shoulder and tucking the head under his opposite arm. “Wonder what kind of god-awful ghost animated this thing?”

“…I know he doesn’t want us to follow him, but…” Tsuna remarked, having just seen Hibari stumble against the doorjamb. “He’s not ‘fine,’ is he?”

“Uh-uh,” Yamamoto shook his head, and the two of them started back in the same direction. “He’s definitely not over whatever he was out sick with.” As if to hammer the point home, Hibari again started coughing. And coughing and coughing and…then it transitioned into a wet hacking that finished with a seal-like noise. All the while his body seemed to be gradually buckling at the waist and knees. Yamamoto and Tsuna grimaced to each other. The former quickly passed the rag doll’s remains to the latter, and then ran to Hibari just in time to catch him as he slumped against the nearest wall, panting raggedly. “OK, easy does it. C’mon, I walk you to the infirmary.”

Hibari rasped, “I’ll walk myself, damn it.” The shorter brushed his taller peer off and forged ahead, swaying more with every step. Yamamoto caught him a second time and slung one of his arms over his shoulder. “…Fuck…” exasperated with himself, Hibari finally relented.

“Tsuna, can you fit that doll in your gym locker?” Yamamoto called back, but didn’t wait for a reply.

“I guess I…wait what? Where’d you put mine, then?”

 

The next thing to greet Hibari’s eyes was a cold off-white grid on a ground of another shade of off-white, with a dimly-glowing box of yet another cold off-white hue off to one side. And obviously it was overhead. What was the word for this kind of thing? Ceiling…ceiling sounded about right. Having solved that mystery, the rest of his memories surfaced from beneath his mental fog instantly: finding the ritual paraphernalia, fighting with a hideous stuffed lookalike mannequin, nearly coughing his lungs out, borrowing Yamamoto’s shoulder, and falling into the infirmary cot half-passed-out on his feet. Now that he thought of it, the cot was pretty cozy. He’d roll over and go back to sleep if he knew he had the time. He’d never admit it aloud, but that fight came much too early in his convalescence.

_…Damn what a day owe Takeshi one_

_What time is it afternoon school over is it ow throat still hurts chest hurts damn it feel feverish again shit balls_

A familiar childlike voice floated in from behind the privacy curtain, followed by cantankerous, characteristically loathsome middle-aged grumbling. Hibari heaved himself upright and massaged his temples.

“…Oy…” he called out hoarsely, “Hensei*…how long was I out?” (*T/N: portmanteau of _sensei_ (doctor/teacher) and _hentai_ (pervert))

A hairy hand yanked the curtain back. Its owner, sitting in a rolling chair and eyeing him disdainfully, responded, “Not long enough,” and flung the curtain back where it was.

“This again, really…?” Hibari mumbled to himself.

“Shamal, just give him a straight answer,” the baby-faced thug in the window chided.

“Well, it’s 14:40 now, and your katana buddy dumped you on me about quarter after 10,” the doctor said, prattled to the curtain. “You do the math.”

“…Got a thermometer?” A moment later, the hairy hand pushed an old-fashioned thermometer past the drapes. Hibari plucked it from the doctor’s fingers like it was contaminated, hesitated, and asked, “Is this thing clean?”

“Sterilized after every use, kid; can’t risk infecting a lady, so of course you penis-creatures benefit incidentally.”

Hibari flipped him off from behind the shades before slipping the thermometer under his tongue. After about 15 seconds it beeped. Hibari glanced at the reading and sighed hard.

“What’s it say?” the midget mobster asked.

“38.4.”

“What were you even doing at school like that?”

“It was barely over 37 this morning.”

“What was it yesterday?”

“I don’t know…38, maybe 39?”

“Yeah, see, it needed to be 37 for at least 24 hours before you came to school.”

“Dumb queer,” the doctor dressed like a host uttered from the side of his mouth.

Hibari crawled to the end of the bed and yanked the curtain aside. “Let me ask you something, fuck-head,” he hissed hoarsely, “Do you ever lose sleep thinking over just how many ways you shat on my life with that one little bug bite? I do.”

“Counterpoint: do you ever lose sleep thinking about how that was entirely your fault?”

“You staggered into me, reeking of alcohol, told me in this sleazy horn-dog voice that I was feisty and asked if I had a sister. You act like a pedophile, I bite you to death like one.”

“Kid, if it were up to me, I’d never let you set foot in this office. I treat you like a proper patient because Reborn would have my head if I didn’t. End of story.”

“…Are you guys off your rags now?” Reborn asked rhetorically. “I mean, can we be civil enough to discuss what sent Hibari here in the first place?”

“Between Mukuro and Yamamoto,” the prefect settled down and coughed a little, “I already know who’s behind it and why.”

“Oh, you do?” Reborn asked, genuinely surprised. He almost let slip that he’d wrung some information from Mukuro himself, but shut himself up upon recalling their agreement. “Let’s hear it.”

The delinquent gruffly cleared his throat, stuck out his hand, and rasped, “First, cough drop.” Dr. Shamal tossed him one.

“Unadulterated, fresh from the box, I swear.”

Assuaged, the 12th-grader popped it in his mouth. “…OK. Mukuro said some guy named…something like…Webber shitty… something fucked up like that… Anyway, that guy’s after Mukuro because in some other life the Webber guy was a deva that Mukuro somehow dragged out of Heaven or something. He fights with illusions and life-sized rag dolls with pointy bits of metal for teeth… Judging by my fight and what Yamamoto said, they’re supposed to switch your soul for theirs when they bite you. And I know for a fact that if you face one that looks like you, as long as its head stays on, you’ll feel any damage you deal it.”

“Honestly, this guy sounds more like a nuisance than a real threat,” the doctor remarked, unimpressed.

“I’d be tempted to agree except Mukuro’s taking a shit-ton of…precautions…” Hibari averted his eyes and seemed to choke a little on the last word.

“Like…?” Reborn prodded, despite knowing the answer.

Hibari sighed heavily. “Go ask Dino. Talking about it once was more than enough.”

“Is he threatening you?”

“I wish,” Hibari growled. His face suddenly seemed to age a few years. “The deed's done.”

“How does Yamamoto figure into this?”

“Mukuro got him by accident. His target was me. Yamamoto just happened to be working the sushi bar while Mukuro was busy ruining my dinner.”

“So I’m guessing whatever he did was served like a poison?”

“ _Akanbo_ …what did I just say about talking about it?” Hibari gritted his teeth.

"You're talking about it too. Anyway, this is important. Probably."

“Poison wouldn't account for Yamamoto if he was preparing food rather than eating it,” Shamal interjected.

“Right…” Reborn twiddled his curly side-locks. “I remember Mukuro being able to possess anyone he cut with his trident. Was it something like that?”

Hibari flinched, grabbed the metal bars of his cot’s ugly foot-board, and crushed them in his grip. “…Conversation over. Good night.” He flopped back on his pillow and threw the covers over himself.

Reborn turned to Shamal. “Bingo.”

“You’re paying for the repairs.”

“Put it on my tab. Meantime, I’d like to arrange a meeting with as much of Vongola as possible to study the dolls and get everyone on the same page. You’re in charge of telling that kid we’re borrowing the rec room.”

“I can still hear you and no you’re not borrowing my room,” Hibari protested flatly from under the covers.

“He already left,” the doctor informed him stolidly. “You oughta know by now there’s no negotiating with that baby.”

“Then I guess extra meat’s on the menu tomorrow.”

“Somehow that sounds both cannibalistic and incredibly gay.”

“Noisy…ugh, how long does it actually take to get over the flu?”

“Nominal recovery time is 5-7 days, but…residual effects can last up to 3 weeks after offset.”

“Shit…”

Shamal threw his feet up onto his desk. “…Oy.”

“This better not be another homophobic rant.”

“Nah, I was just thinking… Never mind, forget it. You’re happier not knowing.”

Hibari debated wringing it out of him, but decided he was too tired. So all Shamal heard was the creaking of the cot as he rolled over.

The doctor, meanwhile, set to drowning the cynical truth he nearly shared in images of his favorite nubile female bodies.

_Almost feel sorry for the little fag ass. Can’t tell him Reborn set him up so I’d infect him…and then used him as a debt to leverage against me. Reborn, pussy you brilliant bastard, you had us slap leashes on each other for you mm, light bondage. Bet Mukuro’s planning something similar. No wonder that guy’s tits and ass so touchy about being controlled, everyone’s trying to make him their damn guard dog bitch_

_Ah, well, boobs that’s his problem tits_

_Jugs sweater meat knockers lady lumps breasts_

_Fuuuuuuck I wanna motorboat Bianchi…_

 

_Motion to allow bottled drinks other than water into club rooms…meh, don’t see why not…I can bring iced coffee._

_Motion to impose noise limits and restricted hours on piano club for interfering with computer entertain—not this shit again. I’m gonna bite you whiny grease-balls next committee hearing…_

_Motion to allow spray-tans—wait, what? Fuck no, that’s not even my jurisdiction…_

_Motion to stop “biting people to death”—ha-ha, not on your life, herbivore…_

_Swear I get 50 of those a year; they never learn_

_I hate these quarterly petition drives_

“Hey, Kyouya,” Dino ducked into the room as he was knocking, “what were you snorting about just now?”

Startled, Hibari accidentally scrawled a lopsided star-shaped scribble on the appeal. He wadded up the ruined leaflet and casually pelted Dino with it. “How about knocking before you barge in and start yapping?”

“I did knock.”

“Before coming in and talking, I mean.”

“Setting that aside,” Dino dodged the chiding, “you sound a lot better than last I heard from you. I’m glad. So what was funny?”

“Somebody almost straight-up petitioned me to stop doing my job.”

Reborn climbed up Dino’s back and poked his head out over his mount’s shoulder. “ _Ciaossu_ , Hibari, back from yesterday’s relapse?”

“What do you think?” The prefect in question started to go to the next petition, but suddenly halted with his pen millimeters above the paper. “Wait… Oh no, you are not commandeering this room for your little meeting.”

“Uh, yeah, we kinda are, since this is the only free room right now,” Reborn pushed back unabashedly.

“Bullshit, the music room’s—”

“Boys, bring in the dolls and spread them on the coffee table.” Hibari chucked a wooden tonfa at Reborn. Dino didn’t even flinch at the loud wood-against-wood crack of Reborn catching the tonfa with his jutte. The toddler twirled Hibari’s weapon about his own a couple times and then sent it back at speed. Hibari snatched it out of the air, and thinking back on his impulse, he wasn’t surprised it had no effect. “Hibari, we’re using this room because none of the students outside our _famiglia_ are crazy enough to come here while you’re here. We’re trying to minimize interference and alarm in the school. You can appreciate that, right? I mean look at these creepy things.”

“You gotta admit, Kyouya, students are gonna ask some uncomfortable questions if they see a couple of beheaded body-double dolls with nails and drill bits for teeth,” Dino added, clearly a little uncomfortable with it himself. The student did eventually reach the conclusion he and Reborn were driving him to, but Hibari took the low road.

_I can sort of match Reborn and Dino 1-on-1…but realistically I can’t take them simultaneously…shit…_

The surly prefect gritted his teeth and resorted to digging around in his desk for cough drop.

“Is-…is it safe?” Tsuna asked, peeking around behind Dino.

“Dino and I will keep Hibari at bay,” Reborn assured him lazily.

“Oy, I'll take him! I could use that energy in the boxing club!” Ryohei called out from somewhere in the hall.

“Shove it, lawn-head, this is serious business,” Gokudera squeezed in past Dino with the Tsuna doll’s body slung over his shoulder and its head in his free hand.

“Boxing is serious business to the extreme, octopus-hair! When am I ever not serious?”

“ **Now** ,” Gokudera responded flatly. “You’re not taking this seriously **now**. At all. In case you haven’t noticed, *uff*” The silver-haired student of mixed ancestry heaved Tsuna’s rag doll doppelganger onto the table like a sack of potatoes, “2 of us have already been attacked by homicidal voodoo dolls from hell, and we have no idea who’s sending them.”

“Actually we do,” Hibari interjected. “We’ve got a name and motive. Hence, I don’t see the need for this obnoxious gathering.”

“That’s just it, man; half of us don’t know what’s going on!” Gokudera fussed whilst gesticulating as if to manually get the air in the office circulating.

“Then ask Yamamoto. He knows about as much as I do.”

“ _Ma_ , that’s not saying much, Hibari,” Yamamoto entered with the body of Hibari’s impostor tucked under his left arm and swinging the head in his right by its stringy hair.

“Don’t bother—?” a strange flurry of flapping and tapping noises interrupted him. He turned to the window behind him and immediately his face turned the color of unglazed bone china, nearly the same color as the feathers on the snowy owl perched on the sill opposite the glass from him. Hibari’s coal-grey felid eyes met the owl’s kanji-6-shaped pupil and narrowed. Stiffly he thrust the window open. The owl fluttered in on a gust of winter air and settled on Hibari’s desk. Slowly, deliberately, the blue-blooded prefect shut the window and locked it, and turned back to the owl, palming the handles of his tonfa. He glanced over at Tsuna and saw him also noticeably wide-eyed and agitated. That settled it: the creature on his desk was without doubt channeling the bane of Hibari’s existence.

In a blur of wooden shrapnel and white feathers, Hibari cracked his desk in half trying to kill the owl with his tonfa.

“Ku-fu-fu, I guess you would know, huh?” the owl uttered in a familiarly rich, seductive, and for Hibari, skin-crawling voice. “Pitiful shrew… And I tried so hard to make your taming pleasurable. Can’t we ever see each other without the DV*?” Mukuro taunted, gliding lazily about the room whilst his neck rotated through impossible angles to keep his unblinking eyes locked on his victim (*T/N: DV = Domestic Violence). After a false start (he forgot he was using his trap-free spare tonfa), Hibari quickly retrained his feral, predatory eyes on the owl and heaved a tonfa at it like a javelin. It mostly speared ceiling tiles, but not without snapping off a few of Mukurou’s feathers. “Alright, yo, time-out.” With that, Mukurou fell from the air into a feathery white heap by the faux potted ficus in the corner.

Hibari abruptly felt hot, invisible bindings grip his windpipe. He started to choke and gasp and claw at his neck. Most of the others rushed forth to find the source of his sudden anguish as he collapsed onto the ruins of his desk. Hibari felt himself drowning in a tempestuous sea of thoroughly unhelpful, groping hands and impotent, panicked outcries set against the thrum of his pounding heart. Blood and air stopped up in his head seemed to clot, and his lungs burned and spasmed as if dying in a fire. Blooming stains of inky black multiplied across his field of vision. At last his consciousness imploded.

When his vision cleared, and breath and blood pressure returned to normal, he discovered to his horror that he could see only out of his left eye and could feel nothing but the top left side of his head. His one working eye saw the others’ fuzzy-haired half-pint boss shudder.

“What—WHAT DID YOU DO TO HIBARI-SAN?!” Tsuna shrieked.

On the outside looking in, the others backed away unnerved yet morbidly fascinated by this changed Hibari, standing tall and smiling serenely but for one eye that bulged and darted about the room on its own. The other eye, calm and narrow yet ringed with rays of bulging veins, now had a kanji figure 6 inscribed across the iris.

Dino roared, “How much more do you plan to do to Kyouya before you’re satisfied?!”

Hijacking Hibari’s mouth, Mukuro explained, “Ku-fu, well that depends on him, now, doesn’t it? We can’t possibly make progress while he’s beset by homicidal rage, so I took him over for now. But I left him an eye and an ear so he can stay in the loop,” he reassured them halfheartedly, pointing toward the twitchy eye rolling wildly in its socket. “Aren’t I nice?”

“Were you the one choking the life out of him just now?” Gokudera demanded.

“It’s not like he’d have yielded up his body willingly.” He sneered, “Aw, you still worry for your old flame? Don’t worry. He’s got me and my blood snakes now. He’s not lonely anymore,” he winked with the eye he controlled. The other eye seemed to wince and cry out for help.

“Blood snakes, wha…?” Gokudera contorted his face in bewilderment.

“My seal of protection, yo,” Mukuro grinned, picked up a keen-edged chip of the desk’s particle board and slit the side of Hibari’s neck with it. Blood beaded along the sliver, growing rapidly into slimy, writhing loops of clots that stitched the wound shut and then seemingly boiled away before everyone’s eyes. “Thing of beauty, isn’t it? The rest of you would do well to let me inoculate you.”

Gokudera gagged. “Aw, God—that is DISGUSTING!” Yamamoto cringed and held himself discreetly, mentally begging Mukuro not to tell Gokudera about his infestation, too. And Ryohei and Tsuna just cocked their heads, noses wrinkled and mouths agape. Even Reborn wrinkled his nose at the display.

“You make me sick…” Dino growled. From the pained look in his pupil’s eye, he guessed Mukuro’s innuendo about loneliness hit home for Hibari even harder than it did for him.

“The feeling’s mutual, **fucking** horse,” Mukuro scoffed. “But onto business. I think the next logical step here is to dissect these dolls, yes? Oy, Hibari-chan. Where do you keep your scissors?” After a few moments' pause, Mukuro molded most of Hibari’s face into a slight frown of concentration while his left eye transitioned rapidly from an irate sliver to a quivering bloodshot saucer, to half-open and on the verge of rolling back. “…Ah, of course,” he mumbled and strode around behind the split desk. The top drawer on the right sustained significant damage in Hibari’s outburst; Mukuro had to pry it open with one foot braced against the lower drawers. When it finally popped loose, he nearly took a hard seat on the floor. A variety of metallic odds and ends showered the linoleum in an ear-ringing cacophony. Among them: paper clips, staples, scissors, binder clips, a Vajra, a 1-hole-punch, a handheld bell, a stapler, and a ruler. “Oh-ho, what’s this?” Mukuro palmed and inspected the Buddhist ritual items first. “I wonder if one of these dolls’ animating souls thought he’d try to cut his chains to hell with these…”

“You sure they’re not part of your enemy’s plan?” Reborn asked.

“Nah, Vepacitti wouldn’t need these. These are the implements of the desperate trying to cheat their way out of the laws of Samsara.”

“Hey, you just pissed me off something fierce!” Ryohei lunged for Mukuro’s/Hibari’s collar, incensed. “My uncle uses those! You implying my uncle’s just trying to save himself?!”

“Yes,” Mukuro responded matter-of-factly, and caught Ryohei’s subsequent punch in his hand without missing a beat. “Not consciously of course, but a well-trained soul can feel the peril of its karma: the flames of the first realm licking at its feet, or the hunger pangs of the second realm, or the vacuous jaws of the third.” Mukuro via Hibari walked right up under Ryohei’s nose. “And let me tell you, the bargaining… **never…** works.” Mukuro let Hibari’s face fall into a slightly self-loathing scowl, adding “Better you never realize you’re falling. Stopping is all the harder for knowing.” Immediately, almost artificially, the parts of Hibari’s face controlled by Mukuro perked back up. He clapped his hands together. “But that’s a story for another time. Let’s open these sacks of shit.” He seemed to relish stabbing Hibari’s mannequin in the neck with a scissor blade and ripping its torso open down its length.

“…Well…that was anticlimactic,” Yamamoto pretty much summed up what they were all thinking when they saw nothing but white fuzz spilling out of the doll’s chest.

“’Tch… All that suspense for ordinary stuffing,” Gokudera grumbled.

Without another word, Mukuro started to dig, ripping out fistfuls of the batting at a time. On the third or fourth handful, the last of the ordinary white fluff came loose and revealed a different layer of stuffing underneath, mostly brown and black, stringy and knotted, with a disconcertingly unctuous feel.

“Is…is that…hair?” Tsuna guessed with half his face contorted in disgust.

“Aw, that is gross to the max!” Ryohei blurted hyperbolically.

Gokudera asked rhetorically from the side of his mouth, “Is that why you shave all yours off?”

“Quiet, octopus hair!”

“Same to you, turf head!”

“Will you two give it a rest?” Reborn whacked them both across the back of their heads with his vermilion-belted black fedora. “Mukuro, is that human hair?”

“Most likely, although horse hair may be mixed in. This is very old magic.”

“There’s no such thing as magic.”

Mukuro leered in Reborn’s face. “And yet you’re talking to a soul possessing one of your understudies about a doll animated by another soul.”

“My philosophy is that it’s not magic if you know how it works.”

Mukuro raised the one eyebrow of Hibari’s that he controlled. “…Touche. Then this is a very old-fashioned way to use one’s flames to affix a soul to an inanimate object. If I understand enough of what Verde used to do to create flame decoys, this is how that was done several millennia ago. Hair is a good repository for flame. Actually, any filamentary structure: hair, thread, yarn, spider’s silk…” He paused. Insight engraved its moniker into his forehead. “Now that I think of it, my memories of Vepacitti are somewhat associated with spiders. I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

Tsuna grimaced, “Bleh…I hate spiders…”

“Can this…Whip a Cheetah…” several suppressed snorts made their rounds through the room, “Can he make his dolls out of other, maybe sturdier things?” Gokudera queried.

“(Vepacitti.) He should be able to, yes.”

“Then why use materials this flimsy? The only thing they can do damage with is their teeth!”

“For one thing, IF one can land a bite that draws blood, AND I haven’t secured a person’s soul to their body with my blood snakes, these are easy to dispose of once the evil spirit switches places with the soul of its victim. When the ghost destroys the doll containing its host body’s original soul, the ghost gets to live as a human again while the victim’s soul goes to limbo.”

“Holy shit-balls…” Gokudera’s jaw dropped.

“I’d never buy this drivel if I didn’t see it right in front of me,” Reborn muttered.

“Vepacitti isn’t that bright. I mean, he’s not stupid; he just doesn’t care to anticipate the intellect of anyone who isn’t a deva. He’s lazy. It’s less work for him to beat his enemy by trial and error than it is for him to strategize. He’s got more time and power at his disposal than he’ll ever need. His only limitation is the materials he can get his hands on.”

“And you’re sure he didn’t want us to be able to beat these things for whatever reason? Surely he didn’t think we were that weak.”

“…I suppose it’s possible… But cloth is more porous to magic—err, flame, so a soul-switching charm in a targeted doll can start unbinding an unprotected victim's soul from well outside biting range. That would work in his favor… Not that I think he really built that into his plans…" Gokudera and Yamamoto both flicked concerned glances at their fluffy-haired boss. "Honestly, I think he did it this way because these are the easiest materials to come by," Mukuro put Hibari's hands in his pockets and sauntered around the broken desk in thought. "Besides, it’d be more like him to start out assuming that yes, we are that weak. He never had a sense of scale for power. ”

Just then, Yamamoto saw movement out of the corner of his eye. His gaze darted over to the head of Tsuna’s doll. The wooden eyeballs slid his way in their stitched sockets.

“AAAAUGH! IT MOVED! THE EYES MOVED!” Had he traveled backward as far as he jumped upward, he’d have cleared the couch.

“What?! OH, _FUCK!_ ” Mukuro barked, “Tsuna, burn the heads, pronto!”

“WAAH—OK!” Tsuna yanked on his special gloves as fast as he could, grabbed the heads, and incinerated them in his hands with his flames. The heat and smoke triggered the fire alarm and the sprinklers in the ceiling unleashed a torrential downpour.

“… _Merda. Merda-cazzo-cazzone-coglione_ —GYAH!” Mukuro tromped back and forth tearing at Hibari’s hair and swearing in Italian. Hibari’s free eye rolled more violently than ever. Taken together with the indoor rainfall, it made for a fairly comical picture.

“C’mon, get out of there!” Dino ushered everyone out of the room and they joined the mass migration of students outside, as per the usual fire drill. “Make no mistake, Mukuro,” Dino hissed as he wrapped his jacket over Hibari’s shoulders, “I’m only doing this so Kyouya doesn’t have another relapse.”

“He’s not that fragile. You should be more worried about your own hide. All of you,” he raised his voice slightly so all of Tsuna's groupies could hear as well. “He just saw every one of us in that room. If you weren’t a target before, you are now.” He chuckled grimly, “Ku-fu-fu… I’ll have to eat my words. Vepacitti’s gotten smarter. Perhaps he’s finally tasted the danger and ugliness that is the state of man? HNNGH—!” Hibari’s body let out a strange grunt and fell against the nearest wall, panting.

“…F-…Fuck…!” Hibari came up gripping his collar. He looked equal parts haggard and pissed off.

“Kyouya, is that you?” Dino grabbed him by the shoulders and looked him in the eyes. The delicately-curved, narrow pewter eyes staring back looked worn out and disconcerted, but they moved together naturally once more, and Mukuro’s seal of control had vanished. “Oh, thank god!” He started to hug his student, but Hibari violently repelled him.

“Don’t touch me… Nobody…fucking…touch me…!” he growled barely above a whisper as menacingly as ever, but a slight tremor tempered his ferocity. He plowed his way through the lackadaisically fleeing crowd to the nearest men’s room and locked the door.

Over the whooping fire alarm, no one could hear Hibari’s fist put a fresh crater in the bathroom wall. Or the shards of broken tile clatter on the floor when he extricated his stinging hand. Or his forehead striking the bathroom door through 20-something coats of paint. But the twinge in his knuckles and his face brought him subtle solace, a glimmer of clarity. As things stood he really was beating his head against a wall, in the broader sense. He’d lost the latest battle for his bodily autonomy, and he’d lose the war if he didn’t start taking his fight to Mukuro the way Mukuro took it to him in his most sacred spaces. However rancid a taste it left in his mouth, he’d have to forgo the bold frontal assault and become an ambush predator, perhaps even one that played at being prey. Not today—the last gasp of his viral infection still sapped his strength—but sometime that weekend, he’d pack his toothbrush and sneak into Hell, knowing well he might dine in it.


	9. Meat Doing Meat Things

The day he finally mustered the mettle to become his own Trojan horse turned out to be a Sunday, and a relatively mild one at that. But if Hibari recalled the forecast correctly, a cold front was supposed to move through that night, so he stuffed his woolen jacket, gloves, scarf, and tuque into his backpack. Knowing Mukuro could sense his flames, and would be looking for his tonfa (which he still packed purely for the sense of normalcy they imparted), he amassed a small cache of improvised concealable weapons. He’d sharpened the stem of his toothbrush to a point and hid that fact in his traveling toothbrush case. He packed a few sturdy ballpoint pens. He swiped a pair of painted metal chopsticks—also handy because he guessed Mukuro and company ate with the same barbarism as they lived. He stuffed a few disposable razors into a side pocket—even if he didn’t have to shave himself out any bindings, he didn’t want to come back looking like a hobo.

…If he came back.

Teenage myopia could only blunt his dread and the shrill protests of his self-preservation instincts so much. On one hand, if it were to backfire and cost him his life, he’d like to have given his parents a proper good-bye. On the other hand, they’d never let him go if they knew what he was about to do. It was a foolhardy plan at best. He knew that. The dread chewed on his stomach harder every day leading up to his departure. But it was the only remaining idea still palatable to his pride.

With everything he thought he’d need and nothing else stuffed into one backpack in the middle of his room, the only thing keeping him from leaving was pondering whether it would worry his mother more to leave a parting note than not.

Maybe he was being melodramatic. Like Dino said, the fact that Mukuro kept reviving him should mean he wanted Hibari alive.

At the same time, should he fail, he couldn’t see how Mukuro could possibly let him off without at the very least a life-altering wound. That monster had a temper.

Hibari’s options felt to him no more palatable than choosing whether to die of starvation or dine on a bloated corpse.

_… Speaking of starving, I guess I should eat one last decent meal before I have to put up with however many days of whatever gut-rotting junk they’ll subject me to…_

_… I should do something I enjoy on my way over, too… Maybe finally take care of those gnats from Copper Ridge…_

Fast forward a few hours, to dusk, dying winds, and a handful of bats that hadn’t yet settled into their overwintering hovels.

The gutted bowling alley on the second floor of Kokuyou Healthy Land stank of sulfurous egg foo young and Chow Mein laced with an unidentified meat or seafood product. Tinny thrash metal played on a worn out boom box in the corner dating from the turn of the millennium. Hibari contemptuously eyed the Kokuyou gang’s frenzy around the spread of Chinese takeout on the empty bowling ball dispenser from beneath the veil of the heavy shadows in the next room over. The voice of reason in the back of his mind seduced him with thoughts of the nice hot shower, wholesome food, and warm bed he’d forsaken at home, practically begging him to turn back now before the revelers saw the glint of their hurricane lanterns in his sclera.

Alas, the youngest among the gang, a teal-haired boy with his hair swathed in an enormous peach-shaped hood, had really good night vision. He stood up in a cold sweat and initiated a bizarre hand-waving dance.

“Ombra Kokko Dombra Kokko~ tampon faerie begone~!”

“Tampon faerie, what the fuck—?” the peach-headed boy’s oddly-coiffed teacher quickly traded his bewilderment for delight as he turned to look at whatever Fran was trying to exorcise. He opened his arms “Ku-fu-fu, would you look at that? It must be my birthday! Come on in and join the festivities, won’t you, Hibari-chan?” Hibari stiffly trudged forth until the lanterns threw their harsh fluorescent light on his blood-stained clothes. “Aw, you even dressed up in blood-spatter for me.”

“What’s Ahiru* doing here?” asked the blonde with a scarred nose and lolling tongue between bites of duck-sauce-drenched eggrolls.  (*Ken’s making a bad pun on the meaning of Hibari’s surname, which translates as “skylark;” _ahiru_ means “duck”)

“Don’t suppose you’ve heard of the ‘40 thieves’ gang, have you? From Copper Ridge,” Hibari swaggered, trying to put on a brave front. But Mukuro just thumbed his lips and looked skyward thoughtfully.

“Hmm… Nope, can’t say that I have.” He turned to his comrades, “You guys?” The rest of his gang shook their heads.

The intruder smirked vindictively. “And now you never will.”

“ _Woo_ …!” Mukuro made a huge scene of shivering with titillation, “I am gonna ride you so hard tonight, yo,”

“Look, you fruity bastard.” Hibari bared his repaired tonfa and sprung their spines. “I know as long as I’m here you’ll invent fantastically horrible ways to fuck me. I’ve made peace with that. But that’s not why I’m here.” Hibari marched up to Mukuro and thrust his barbed bludgeon under his nemesis’s chin. “I’m here to be a thorn in your side. If helping you beat Vepacitti is my only hope of freedom, I’ll will push and shove and haul your ass through every damn street in the district ‘til you find him and kill him.” Hibari stowed his tonfa and stood back upright. “Consider it your down payment.”

“Wait; are you the guy who woke us all up screaming last weekend?” MM pointed brusquely with her chopsticks. Hibari flushed and stared daggers into her. “Yeep…!”

“Ku-fu-fu-fu, aw look, now you’ve embarrassed him,” Mukuro scolded facetiously, “He only screamed once.”

“Oy…Niwatori*, or whatever your name is…can you please go change or something? I can’t handle blood right now,” Chikusa complained wearily from Ken’s lap. (*Not just a bastardization of the sound, but yet another a bad pun on the meaning of his name. _Niwatori_ means “chicken,” though kanji for bird contained within is different from that in _hibari_.)

“Oh, that’s right! You don’t know the reason for our feast. It’s to celebrate Chikusa’s escape from Vepacitti’s layer. Well, that and I’m finally over my flu. No thanks to you, my little germ farm,” Mukuro sneered and poked Hibari in the chest with his chopsticks. Hibari ripped them out of his hands, snapped them between his fingers, and speared* Mukuro’s Chow Mein with them before ducking into a booth with his overnight bag to change. “… _Merda_ , Fran, you weren’t too far off with that tampon crack, yo.” (*T/N planting chopsticks upright in food, especially rice, is considered rude because of the resemblance to funeral incense)

“Aw, c’mon, Kaki-pii, you gotta eat more than that,” Ken cajoled, poking the barcode tattooed on the side of Chikusa’s face with a spring roll.

“I told you, I don’t want anymore,” Chikusa turned away with a grimace, “Especially not meat.”

“You can have my tofu,” Fran mumbled with his mouth full.

“I’m. Not. Hungry.”

“Hibari-chan,” Mukuro called over his shoulder, “Want me to make you a plate while you’re changing?”

“I’m done,” Hibari replied tersely, returning to the light in khaki trousers, a ruddy brown button-down shirt, and a plum-black hooded sweat-jacket.

“I recommend the shrimp Pad Thai.”

“I’ll steal this,” Hibari muttered, swiping a three-quarters-full carton of Hunan beef and a pair of disposable chopsticks, and taking them to the farthest seat from Mukuro, a step up and a row back behind MM. The lone brunette girl squirmed and fiddled with her bow-shaped barrette.

“You…you’re actually pretty cute up close,” MM mumbled shyly.

“I’m gay,” Hibari said flatly, stuffing a hunk of beef in his mouth.

“Figures…they’re always gay or taken.” MM grumbled under her breath.

Almost as if to console her, the now-plainclothes prefect continued, “…But honestly, between Mukuro and your clarinet, your clarinet’s probably the better lay.” MM sat bolt upright and turned a lovely shade of scarlet.

“That’s vicious, yo,” Mukuro shook his head.

“A clarinet doesn’t gut you like a trout during sex,” Hibari retorted matter-of-factly, not even pausing to swallow his food.

“Didn’t I already apologize for going overboard that night?”

“One does not simply apologize for slicing a person open and whacking it into their intestines—!”

“Guys, GUYS! Can we not talk about blood and guts right now?” Chikusa groaned, covering his ears. Hibari glanced over and for the first time noticed how bruised and abraded the bespectacled boy’s hands were.

“Hey, glasses guy… Somebody mentioned you escaped from Wepa…Whip-a—?”

“Vepacitti, yes, that’s our excuse for splurging tonight,” Mukuro finished for him.

“Since that guy's my excuse,” Hibari swallowed a stem of broccoli, “Fill us in.”

“I’d rather not…” By now, Chikusa’s face was the same dingy ivory as his button-down shirt.

“That wasn’t a question.” Hibari pressed. “This is: were there any Namimori students imprisoned with you?”

Chikusa sighed heavily. “…There were at least 6 other people in the cell with me. It was pretty dim, but now that you mention it, yeah, I think they were all Namimori students.”

“How did they get you, anyway?” Fran asked, exposing his mouthful of semi-masticated egg foo young.

“(Don’t talk with your mouth full, damn it.)”

“(Sorry.)”

“…I think it was something in gas form, but I can’t remember much. First thing I remember clearly was…waking up in a bunker full of other kids all freaking out. Some really ugly life-sized wooden dolls dragged about 3 other people out before they got to me. None of them came back.”

Hibari leaned in closer. “What’d they drag you out for?”

“Ugh… They…took me to some place that looked like an autopsy room.” Chikusa shuddered. “I swear to god, there were spiders in there the size of housecats. I mean literally. With, like…serial killer masks on their backs. Couldn't see the ceiling through them. I remember seeing this big fat sumo-wrestler-looking guy in a Hawaiian shirt, 40-something I think. He looked me over, then he strapped me to the autopsy table…and then…the spiders all started coming down…” Chikusa’s voice started to break. He curled up tighter and gripped Ken’s pants leg tightly. Ken looked a little unsure of what to do with his hands, but eventually he settled on rubbing Chikusa’s shoulder and staring awkwardly the other way. “I really… thought I was gonna die there…”

“You want a hug?” Fran asked.

“C’mon Kaki-pii,” Ken mumbled, “don’t ruin your cold-blooded image.”

“Oh, fuck you—! Just…” Chikusa took several deep breaths in a row. “OK…I’m OK… I’m fine, now… They crawled all over me and bit the shit out of me, but… I guess I didn’t react the way they wanted me to, so the wooden puppets that brought me there threw me down a chute into, like a…'nother storage garage. It was all concrete except for the chute, the garage door,an air duct, and a drain in the floor. Nothing inside but…um…” Chikusa sat up looking sallow. He pointed to the carry-out bag. “I need that.” Mukuro wadded it up and tossed it to him. The boy in the knit cap shook it open and held it in his lap.

“C’mon, we need the rest of the story,” Hibari demanded callously.

“If you don’t mind me puking.”

“This is potentially vital information.”

“Well, then you take responsibility.”

“Go. ‘Nothing else except’…?”

“…Blood stains and bits of…flesh…just…little globs of meat here and there all over the floor—URK” he dry-heaved into the bag. “Ugh…shit… I didn’t wanna stick around to find out if they were human, so I used my yo-yo to open the air vent and climb up into the ducts. Then I just crawled around in there for…must’ve been hours looking for an exit. But…on the way I pretty much answered my question…ULK,” he gagged again.

"What question?" Fran asked through a cheek-full of Chinese.

"Whether or not the meat was human."

“…Well…were they?” MM cringed, not sure if she wanted an answer. Chikusa nodded gravely.

“I hate to make you answer this,” Mukuro leaned forward, “but how did you find out?”

“C…Couple rooms over…from where I was held… I smelled blood…really strong…so I looked, anNGUH—!” he finally put his barf bag to use.

“OK, fine, maybe we should continue some other time,” Hibari murmured, feeling a stab of empathy.

“No!” Chikusa coughed and sputtered, “I’m this close to never having to talk about it again! There were…2 creatures loping around in there. I swear to god, they were entirely made of human body parts, enough to make at least 5 or 6 people, stitched together to make like…a scorpion and something 3-legged! Their eyeballs were already rotting out of their heads—ULP! I'm done—bathroom—UCK!” Chikusa bolted, one hand carrying the barf bag and the other over his mouth. Ken just sat there agape.

“…Motherfucker…!”

“… _'Che cazzo*_ ,” Mukuro uttered, dumbfounded, “…That’s sick even for me…” (*T/N: effectively "what the fuck")

“I…can’t eat another bite…” MM put her food down and nudged it away.

“Me either,” Fran announced, and tossed his food over his shoulder. His teacher was not amused.

“Fran, pick that up.”

“Crap.”

“Those damn well better not be Namimori students getting turned into undead patchwork monsters like that,” Hibari crushed the armrest of his chair.

“If they are…and I’d almost be willing to bet they are, given the attacks by his dolls…it looks like Vepacitti’s gotten it in his head that the best way to get to me is through Namimori. This could be bad…” Mukuro scratched his chin, a touch disconcerted for once. “Chrome-chan goes there… This could be really bad.”

“…Where is she, anyway?” Hibari glanced around, puzzled.

“She moved in with that weird chatty girl who likes cosplay,” Mukuro licked the last of a duck-sauce-slathered spring roll off his fingers.

Hibari’s face subtly soured with annoyance. “Ah, Haru. The human tabloid.”

“Her family seems to be pretty well off. She’s probably better off sleeping there than she was in this shit-hole. Shame it’s such a sausage fest without her.”

“Um, hello?” MM protested.

“Just ignore her,” Fran thumbed to MM and deadpanned, “she plays her own flute just like the rest of us.” Ken slapped his knee and howled, Mukuro snorted, MM’s gaping face turned brilliantly vermilion, Hibari made a face like he’d been mooned by someone obscenely unhygienic, and Chikusa, who’d just returned, just sighed heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“How long have you been saving that up?” The bespectacled teen gave the boy in the fruity helmet a hard noogie.

“…” Hibari just sat there shaking his head in repugnance. “For fuck’s sake, how depraved do you have to be to raise a kid who cracks dick jokes while we’re talking about people we might possibly know being butchered and turned into zombie composite creatures?”

“Ku-fu…” Mukuro leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and his chin on his folded hands. “Hibari-chan…I’ll let you in on a little something. You and Fran are the only 2 people in this room who haven’t been violently experimented on, and before Fran lived in the mountains where we found him, he lived in a veritable war zone in Sicily, the Mafia heartland. Do we still have nightmares about that shit? Sure. But we don’t lose sleep over it. Because we all realized a while ago that that nicety we were fed about life being sacred is bullshit. Nothing is sacred. Least of all humans. Life sucks, then you die, then you come back and it sucks some more. The sooner you realize that—I mean really internalize it—the better you’ll cope.”

"We're meat talking about meat doing meat things to other meat," Fran added with his mouth full, while Chikusa groaned everyone's favorite 4-letter word through the whole description from the second word onward.

"See, Fran gets it. And he's like, what, 12?"

Hibari glowered, trying to think of a rebuttal, but all he could think to say was that the kid had to have a screw loose to think that way so young. But who was he to say? He was already halfway there himself. Hell, in his day-to-day life, he subscribed to a pretty similar philosophy, at least superficially. He couldn’t be sure if his sudden distaste for that worldview was because deep down he had a healthy respect for life, or if it simply seemed extra deleterious because it spewed from the mouth of that odd-eyed degenerate.

“By the way,” Mukuro finally broke the stilted silence, “We got some special tea for the occasion. Should be done by now. Have some?”

“I’m going to bed,” Chikusa stood and ambled lethargically toward one of several exits.

“No tea?”

“That shit ain’t tea.”

“Don’t ruin it for Hibari-chan, yo.”

“Eh, I’m going with Kaki-pii; that stuff’s a little stiff for me,” the lupine boy slunk off after his tuque-capped cousin.

“I’ll take a little,” MM piped up.

“Me too,” Fran stuck his hand up through his peach-shaped illusory helmet.

Mukuro cheerily sauntered over to a kettle that looked like it barely survived the Hiroshima bomb, sitting on a gas burner inside the guts of a snack bar. After a little clinking and clattering, he returned with the kettle in one hand and a stack of small, slightly sticky soup mugs in the other. Without setting the kettle down, he poured himself and each of the other 3 a cup. Fran rocked on his ischium in anticipation, while MM looked bored and Hibari once again stood at a distance. From his bastion in the next booth over, he could not see the wispy petals of pale blush pink tumble into the ancient ceramic cups.

“It’s ready, Hibari-chan!”

Hibari made his way over without much fuss, but maintained his surly mien almost religiously. “Who in this hellhole is ‘-chan?’” he hissed, taking the cup as an afterthought. Blindly he brought it to within a few centimeters of his lips before a familiarly heady fragrance nearly knocked him on his butt. “Ugh…!” He thrust the cup to arm's length in revulsion. “…Salt-pickled sakura tea… You goddamn douche-nozzle…”

“You wouldn’t have it any other way, though, would you?” Mukuro leered. “For MM and Fran, here, it’s a legal nightcap, but I have plans for us after this.”

Hibari wrinkled his nose, once again afflicted with the sensation of being some hungry butcher’s prized steak. Without another word, he pinched his nose and gulped his tea in one go, finishing with a cough and a sputter at its heat. “…Another.”

Mukuro frowned, briefly nonplussed, “Really?” But then he shrugged and topped his victim off with a smile. “Huh, I expected you to have a cat’s tongue.”

“I half expected that myself,” MM remarked at no one in particular.

“Not in the least,” Hibari jerked his cup back from the spout of Mukuro’s kettle, allowing the liquid to form a light spatter trail from the kettle to his shoes. “Besides, this way I don’t have to taste your filthy cooking.” He sneered right back at Mukuro before taking another oversized swig.

“Eh?” MM knew there was a dirty innuendo hidden in there somewhere, but couldn’t figure it out. Or, more likely, was subconsciously trying not to. Fran was OK with that, though.

“C’mon, MM-chan, I think our pineapple lord wants to give our guest his piña colada,” the peach-hooded boy deadpanned, dragging his now beet-red and squirming baby-sitter out of the picture. “You know; the white stuff.”

“ **We got it,** ” Hibari raised his voice sternly. Fran hurriedly disappeared into the shadows of the next room with a sheepish but half-facetious yelp.

“Ku-fu-fu-fu…!” Mukuro found himself both irked and impressed by his protégé’s bawdiness. “That one’s growing up a little too fast for my comfort.” He turned back to Hibari and leaned in close with a sultry look in his eyes. “So…going to finish that second cup?”

“…Thinking about it…” Hibari responded stiffly. But rather than his face as a whole, Mukuro’s rapacious gaze had locked onto a bead of sweat slithering gradually down the prefect’s pale neck.

“You’re actually struggling to stay off your knees, aren’t you? Ku-fu… No better after all these years? I’d always wondered, after seeing your reaction to its pheromones, what would happen if you ingested it? It looks like you had a similar curiosity.” Mukuro put his finger to Hibari’s increasingly clammy forehead and gave it a nudge. Hibari dropped the cup and slumped to the floor like his bones had turned to jelly. “Still…why investigate in my company, knowing what I have in store for you?”

“…Better than…better this than…the snakes…” Hibari struggled to lift his head to respond.

Mukuro blinked, pouted, and then allowed a shrewd grin incise his face. “When will you learn to let go…?”

 

Not long after, the scent of burning candles overtook the fragrance of sakura. Hibari found himself in a well-worn futon, sprawled chest-down across Mukuro’s lap, with his pants undone and his shirt hanging clinging to him only by a sleeve. While it wasn’t as if the room were decked out like a tacky love hotel, close by on the salvaged lid of a cardboard moving box, there was an ample cluster of rather large candles sealed with lacquer to hold lagoons of wax in varying shades of red around their multiple wicks as they burned down. Curiously, the box also contained a couple of old paintbrushes, spongy things, and some plastic silverware from a western restaurant. The prefect logically wanted to ask, but thanks to the tea, he found it exhausting trying to translate the mental image of his intentions into coherent words. So he held his grudging silence, thinking he’d probably find out soon enough and immediately regret it.

“You’re probably wondering if I prepared all this because I knew you were coming.”

“… _Un_ …” Hibari softly grunted the affirmative.

“I wonder too,” Mukuro tapped Hibari affectionately on the cheek. The latter growled. “Just kidding, the only thing I got recently were the candles. You get a lot of weird dreams when you’re sick. I dreamed up a rather intriguing idea a few days ago. Maybe because I saw your calligraphy when I paid you a sick visit.”

“Fucking psycho stalker bitch…”

“It’s a compliment, yo. I like everything you do.”

“Bite me.”

“Of course,” Mukuro grinned, hoisted Hibari up by the hair, and bit hard where his trident had bitten first , the scar on Hibari’s left shoulder, just above the collarbone, from their second fight. Hibari hissed. Mukuro let up, embraced Hibari at the chest, and started to suckle at the bite wound, rubbing his chest and fingering his areolas as he did so. “Mmm…you taste good. Especially after that…vile liquid essence of salt-and-vinegar potato crisps with floral garnish.”

“…Why the hell buy it, then?”

“The smell, Hibari-chan. The scent evokes everything I find so adorable about you.” He started punctuating his eerie observances with kisses along his captive’s spine. “…Your mischievous demeanor when you’re unguarded… That rich, smooth, perpetually calm and conceited voice… Those stone-cold eyes that never yield… The creative ways you struggle so long after you’ve lost… The way your musky smell blends so harmoniously with blood…and sweat, and semen… The faces you make when you’re writhing in pain…and pleasure…” He laid Hibari back down into his lap, pinning his arms with his right hand and slipping his left hand down the back of Hibari’s pants, “the way you pant and shiver and try to stifle your voice in my capable hands, and…” he jammed a finger inside, extracted a husky, startled grunt from his prey, “…it ends up coming out even more erotic.”

Hibari remarked haltingly through gritted teeth, “…not sure if…deliberately creepy, or…can’t hear yourself…”

“Anyway, I don’t drink sakura tea. I inhale it. Like this…” He buried his face in the shaggy hair on the back of Hibari’s head and breathed deeply from the nape of his neck.

“…can’t hear me either, huh…” Hibari murmured with a shudder.

“I kinda like that you’ve let your hair grow out like this. It suits you. But if you don’t keep your head down it might get in the way of my plan for you.” He pushed Hibari’s head down into his thigh. It would’ve taken more willpower than Hibari had to fight it if not for the enervating effects of the sakura tea. In a way he was thankful for his prescience.

_…Relax… bide your time…only struggle enough to avoid suspicion…can’t be any worse than the other night…_

_…bullshit…of course it can be worse…_

_Fuck_

_But he said_

_When’s he ever told the truth?_

_… Just do something…_

Out of the corner of his eye, the prefect saw his tormentor walk his fingers across the assortment of brushes and other tools.

“Ever heard of encaustic?” Mukuro asked casually. Hibari didn’t respond, at least not that Mukuro could see. “Well, basically it means painting with hot wax. Famous in Italy because so many of the Renaissance masters did it. Obviously I don’t have any formal training and my supplies are limited, but I still thought it’d be fun to try.”

Hibari rolled his eyes and let his head droop in dread. “…Lemme guess…I’m the canvas?”

“You got it, yo.”

“…Dammit…”

“Lessee…start with a medium-sized brush…and the dark red,” Mukuro mumbled to himself contemplatively, turning the old paintbrush between his fingers. “If I remember right… opaque pigments are supposed to be applied dark to light…or does wax dry translucent?”

Hibari’s view afforded him little warning of the impending burns, but he cringed in anticipation all the same. And none too soon. He felt Mukuro shift under him as he leaned over to the candles and withdrew. Seconds later—splat. A scalding droplet slapped the back of his shoulder blade with white-hot molten misery for a few seconds before fading into a dull, smoldering sting. And seconds later another boiling daub seared his back right next to the first. And another droplet, and another, and another. As the number of burns dappling his back grew, the prefect began to notice a pattern. Most of his tormentor’s strokes seemed to cluster in ringlets of 5. Despite the dying screams of his charred skin giving way to raw numbness, Hibari pieced the burns together like a mental jigsaw puzzle. Clusters of 5 short strokes in rings, colored pink and red. Flowers. Blossoms. **Sakura**.

_This motherfucker._

“…For…how many years…do you intend…to hold my sakura affliction…over my head?”

“Ku-fu, as long as you react to it. Maybe longer, I dunno. It’s just so achingly beautiful. You, a monstrously strong, compacted ball of cold-blooded fury, reduced to this…seductively languid state, so ready to be ravished, by the epitome of nature’s delicate beauty. Can you feel me getting hard just thinking about it?”

“…Not gonna…dignify that with…a response…” the human canvas slumped further, growing fatigued from wincing and tensing over every new scorch mark. “…You gonna paint me all night…or are you gonna fuck me and go to sleep?”

“Ku-fu-fu…impatient, aren’t we? OK, as you will.” Mukuro grabbed the lighter pink candle, dumped the pool of wax around the wicks down Hibari’s spine, and stubbed the candle out in the small of Hibari’s back, drawing sharp, throaty grunts from the makeshift living candle snuffer. While Hibari writhed and sucked his teeth from the last burn, his abuser snatched the red candle and smeared the molten end into the inside of Hibari’s upper thigh. The prefect clawed at the futon sheets and struggled to drag himself off his captor’s lap. But the latter easily held him down and let a mahogany candle sting the inside of his other thigh similarly. Finally, he got to the magenta candle, the shortest and fattest of the bunch. The spiky-haired ruffian pulled one of the prefect’s legs up and held it curled over, foot pointing to the back of his head. With his free hand, Mukuro gripped the last candle near the base, licked his lips, and mashed the trio of flames and the simmering raspberry-pink goo all over the prefect’s perineum and down the backside of his scrotum. Hibari’s voice briefly slipped out as he gasped in pain.

“…HAHNGH! …NNH……ugh…” He dug his nails into Mukuro’s knee. Mukuro release his leg, but that appeared to have been his intent regardless of the scratches he’d just received. With the same hand, he yanked Hibari’s head up by the hair to get a better look at his deliciously watery-eyed grimace of agony.

“Now, that is a nice f—Hey, wait, don’t pass o— _Merda_.”

Blessed blackness relieved the head boy for mere moments. Then he jolted awake to the sensation of a thousand knives attacking his pelvic floor in as many ways. He looked over his shoulder and realized it was his rapist’s bare balls slapping his burns with every thrust.

“Welcome back.”

“Ah… Shit,” Hibari cursed through gritted teeth.

“You know you kinda spoiled my plans again.”

“Good.”

“Don’t you wanna hear the plan?”

“No.”

Mukuro shared anyway. “I thought I’d fuck you with MM’s clarinet before taking you myself, see if your ass would play a tune if I squeezed you. But you’re no fun when you’re out cold and I couldn’t wait that long.”

“…Heh…revenge?” For a moment Hibari’s grimace nearly resembled the slit-mouthed sneer of his captor. “That actually…ngh…got your goat?”

“You said her clarinet was probably the better fuck. I wanted to see if you’d say the same while it was in you. I might yet do it tomorrow, depending on my mood.”

“Go ahead, see if I care…” His feeble sneer turned fatalistic. “And when I die…ugh…of a perforated colon…ngh…I’ll finally be away from you…”

Mukuro’s grin faltered. He yanked Hibari by the leg, twisted him around so they faced each other, and slammed into him twice as hard and fast as before. He panted, a little more gruffly than usual, “You’re getting pretty good at wounding me without lifting a finger.”

With great effort, the receiver lifted his hand and, indicatively, barely touched the side of his unwanted giver’s face. “…I…hngh…learned from…the best…agh…ngh…unnh—hah—hnngh—NGUGH!” Hibari arched his back and lapsed back into merciful unconsciousness, his spitefully triumphant smirk slowly sliding off his sleeping face. Mukuro finished inside him, likewise grinning with Schadenfreude. Yet an astute and conscious observer, were one present, might’ve seen the muscles beneath his eyes betray something resembling dissatisfaction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter's sex scene was inspired by: http://remontant.deviantart.com/art/sakura-saku-100614251


	10. Roué

For a split second, Hibari thought he woke up the next morning. But immediately breathtaking pain, running him through from between the legs to the mouth, overtook him. He gagged on something slimy and serpentine emerging from his throat. He remembered its taste, the rusty smell overwhelming his nostrils from the inside, the nauseous squirming mass filling his core. Memory flooded back to him.

_That night again?_

_No… can’t be… _

_Tonight’s not that night anymore, is it?_

_Please tell me it’s not still that night…!_

_Anything but that!_

_I ESCAPED THAT I FUCKING ESCAPED I_

_…came back to end it on my terms …_

If his airways weren’t clogged he’d be chuckling like a broken man slowly descending into hysterics. But the slippery red snake spearing him from one end of his digestive tract to the other apparently noticed anyway and didn’t seem to take it too well. It hissed in his face and started to drool something pink from its fangs. It struck him in the left shoulder, then again on the nape of his neck, and again on his back. Wherever it bit, the rosy ooze bloomed across his lightly olive skin, searing the flesh underneath. At some point it stopped moving and just let the blush-colored scalding venom drip and splatter on his back.

Once content with its morbid painting on its epidermal canvas, the snake made of clotted blood burrowed back into Hibari’s body and multiplied deep between his sinews. The whole nest of them burst from the burns on his back in miniature, little more than sodden crimson yarn. The strands began to hoist him from the dingy mattress, pulling him more or less upright in the process. The smell of blood lingering in his nose gave way to the dank stench of rotting meat, and shortly his back was plastered to the clammy, fleshy, in some places crusty-feeling source of the malodorous fumes. He fought the stringy tendrils pulling at the back of his neck to see what sort of abomination they were stitching him to. On his right, his arm was being sewn into the butterflied chest cavity of a decapitated, one-armed necrotic body. Below him, the threads, now silky, silvery strands were winding down his legs in the wakes of exceedingly large neon-yellow spiders with leering face-like patterns on their abdomens. The silk splayed his thighs and stitched them over the shoulders of 2 other bodies with their heads, slightly warped by the early stages of decomposition, sewn together cheek-to-cheek and wedged in Hibari’s groin. The sight to his left was much the same as his right but for the increasing numbers of spiders.

Just then, he felt something come to rest on top of him. A hand, less a few spotty patches of flesh, flopped over the right side of his face. The more he tried to shake it off, the more a foreign mass of sticky black hair started to slip down over the other eye, until finally the weight that had dropped onto his head slid off the left side and settled on his shoulder. He haltingly turned his head. For one infinitesimal but horrifying fraction of a second, his bulging eyes met their sallow, deflated counterparts weeping out of an upside-down girl’s heavily decomposed head.

It turned out that one of those eyeballs wasn’t a dream, at least not entirely. Still in somnolent stupor, Hibari swung out at the empty stare, eliciting a youthful, boyish yelp. He blinked, rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and propped himself up on his elbows. No more than an arm’s length away sat a teal-haired boy massaging his discolored cheek, his head mostly encapsulated by an enormous, perfectly globefish-shaped hood. Hibari sighed hard.

“…Kid… Don’t hover if you’re not gonna ambush…” He paused, “…speaking of ambush, where’d Mukuro get off to?”

 “He went out looking for leads on Vepacitti,” Fran wiggled his jaw around tentatively but otherwise seemed unfazed. “He said he didn’t want you trying to drag him around ‘in that state.’ Whatever that means.”

Hibari blinked for a moment in disbelief before shaking his head. “…He’s not that considerate. There’s gotta be an ulterior motive.”

“Well, yeah, he also went to bum a shower and get today’s water supply from the neighborhood pool complex 3 blocks northwest of here, but we all do that. The only running water here is in the toilets on the first and kinda-sorta the second floor. Second floor is OK for pee and puke, but if you have to take a dump, go to the first floor. That’s where we keep the TP and hand sanitizer. Also, pro-tip: if you need to rub one out, don’t use the hand sanitizer as lotion.”

“…You tried whacking it with alcohol?” Hibari snorted, “You’re an idiot.”

Fran just deadpanned, “I’m guessing you probably also shouldn’t use it to clean Mukuro-sama’s sperm out of your butthole.” Hibari flinched at the kid’s brutally unabashed awareness.

 “…Don’t tell me…” A horrifying moral outrage suddenly started to boil in his gullet, “when I’m not around he uses you?”

“No, you’re the only one he looks at that way.” Hibari relaxed his shoulders in apparent relief. “But technically given how many lives he’s lived and remembered, he’s a pedophile no matter who he screws.”

“…Still…Whoever was raising you before Mukuro, you need to go back to them before he rubs off on you. You're too young to know this stuff.”

“Probably too late. Anyway, I can’t. Oba-chan’s dead now. Cheese wheel fell on her foot, and then it was like a scene out of Home Alone*, only she fell down the stairs and died at the end,” Fran replied matter-of-factly, and dug a tangerine out of his pocket. He started to peel it, but after a few seconds he noticed Hibari staring at it. “Tangerine? I brought a bag of ‘em.” (*T/N: if anyone knows of a Japanese pop culture reference full of similar Rube-Goldberg trap humor, I'll swap it out)

Almost on cue, Hibari’s stomach growled. He shrugged and looked away, “…Sure.” Immediately Fran scampered out of the room and returned in less than a minute with the fresh orange fruit, which he lobbed to Hibari from his seat. Hibari caught it with ease and mumbled, “Thanks.”

“They’re seedless, too.”

“Good,” he replied distantly, rolling the tangerine around in his hand looking thoughtful. After a few moments, he put it down on the futon, bit his lip, and gingerly sat up. “…Huh… I expected that to be worse.” He glanced at Fran and noticed he was leaning and craning his neck for a better view of the prefect’s back. “That’s Mukuro’s craptastic attempt at…encaustic, I think he said.”

“What’s that?”

“Painting with hot wax.”

“Cool.”

“No, not cool,” Hibari reached down to rub the back of one of his thighs, only to discover there were no wounds to massage. Just raw, peeling skin. “…What the…? Oh, that mother—…pardon my language. Just found out I’ve been had. **Again**.”

“What else did Master do? Or pretend to do?”

“Stubbed the candles out on my junk. And the backs of my legs.”

“The blood snakes probably healed that if it broke the skin.”

“…What?”

“You didn’t know?” Fran’s eyebrows perked up and his fishy helmet grew for some reason. “You should give Master more credit. If we bleed, the blood snakes will stitch us up - unless Mukuro-sama tells them not to. That plus protection against possession. It’s awesome.”

“No it is FUCKING NOT!” Hibari snapped and hurled the tangerine at Fran’s feet so hard that it pancaked against the concrete floor. Fruit pulp squirted out sideways onto Fran’s boots. “…For your own sake, you need to get this through your head. Mukuro doesn’t love or care for us. Not you, not me, not anyone anywhere. He’s a world-class psychopath. He infected us only so we couldn’t be used against him. So **he** could use **us**. I hope to whatever god you pray to that he never decides you’re a good substitute for me. You’d never have another good night’s sleep.”

Fran pouted a little. “…You’re wrong. I’m around him more and I hear all the time how he talks about you when you’re not around. He puts you on a pedestal and talks about you like art. It’s creepy. Me, Chikusa, Ken, and MM? We’re all pets as far as he’s concerned. I’m a parrot, Ken is Ken*, and maybe the other 2 are…cats or something. Chrome-chan is like his little potted plant. But for you…it’s like he’s trying to recall all of humanity he’s ever seen or been and roll them into one big…mass of pure…human…ness…to shower you with.” (*Ken can mean “dog”)

“By being as inhumane as possible?”

“…Well, that’s pretty typically human, isn’t it?”

“…No, no, no…there is no way he doesn’t know better.”

“Sure he does; but it’s all part of the plan.”

“…What plan?”

“I…dunno. He won’t say.”

“…But you don’t intend to stop him, do you?”

“Like I said, we’re his toys. We couldn't stop him even if we all wanted to. And we don't, because we’re his favorites. ‘Sides, he’s always been right in the end.”

Hibari shook his head knowingly, “You’re wrong. He screwed up royally about 3 and a half years ago. He and all his toys paid for it. I made sure of that.” He paused, growled, and clicked his tongue. “Or I tried to, anyway. Apparently it wasn’t enough. We’re all still paying for it.”

“You too?” The eyes on Fran’s fishy helmet lolled as he cocked his head. “I don’t think this is related.”

“The war Mukuro and I started that day has never ended.” Hibari hunched and rested his head atop his folded hands. “There are only ceasefires.”

“’Til now, right?”

Hibari shot him a glare and menaced, daring him to keep questioning, “ **Only. Ceasefires.** ” He mumbled under his breath, “A dog on a leash can still bite its master.”

Fran just picked his ear, unimpressed. “Not if it’s muzzled.”

“…It still has its claws.”

“Only if it’s not being groomed properly.”

Hibari fought the urge to strangle the little urchin. “Dammit, kid, I’m trying not to get Stockholm syndrome!”

“Well, there’s always wet dog smell. Speaking of smell, wanna guess what you smell like?” Fran pointed vigorously at the buggy-eyed globefish encapsulating his head. “Hint-hint.” The prefect pursed his lips and inhaled deeply through his nose, ears reddening. Fran’s eyes started to resemble the fugu fish’s. “Uh-oh.” Before the imp could run, the naked target of his needling reached through the piscine illusion, grabbed him by his appropriately aqua hair, and shoved him face-first into his armpit. “MASTER, MASTER, I’M BEING SUFFOCATED IN A HUMAN BAIT BUCKET!” Fran rasped melodramatically.

After all of about 5 seconds, Hibari released the gagging preteen, wrapped the ratty blanket around his waist and staggered somewhat painfully to his feet. But he buried it under a relatively good-humored smirk and admonished the victim of his equally sophomoric prank, “You better get used to that funk if you ever wanna get laid.” A thought occurred to him that make him snigger a little through his nose as he ambled gingerly toward the door.

_Huh. I get it. This little pest is comic relief. Mukuro can’t bring himself to do anything._

“Ya, _chibi_ , point me to a show— **erf**?” As soon as he rounded the corner, he collided with another body, one that uttered a very familiar hair-raising chuckle.

“Ku-fu-fu, brought your shower right here. It’s a little cold, but that should feel good on your back, no?”

“Mukuro…” Hibari growled, his left hand stinging from catching his own instinctive punch right of out launch. “You don’t know how lucky you are…”

“You’re still here. I feel pretty damn lucky,” the tall, spiky-haired miscreant smiled innocently as he nudged his captive back toward the futon with sponge and a bar of cheap soap. His other hand lugged a tin bucket full of fresh water reeking of chlorine, which he rested next to the head of the pallet as soon as Hibari stumbled on the futon and fell backward. “Oy, Fran.” Mukuro wrapped himself around Hibari’s back, pushed the makeshift blanket sarong down past Hibari’s hips, and gripped his length beneath. “Wanna see the source of that bait smell?”

Fran stared pokerfaced, not at his master, but his guest. The hostage head boy had undergone a staggering transformation from his almost playful demeanor moments ago. Hibari’s slate-grey, normally sleepy-looking eyes suddenly bulged with dread from deep hollows etched by trauma. They seemed to beg something of Fran, but he couldn’t tell if that something was ‘help me’ or ‘run while you can.’

Knowing the former was impossible, he chose the latter with little hesitation. But putting him out of sight did not put Hibari’s plight out of mind, especially not when he could occasionally hear faint sounds of struggling and choked moans in the distance. He even tried going outside and antagonizing the pigeons. Still the tormented vocalizations played in his head.

About an hour later, when the silence had long since returned, Fran went back to Hibari, wearing a giant tangerine illusion about his head in place of the blowfish. The younger found the older sprawled face-down in much the same position as he’d found him earlier, only the fishy smell had been replaced by the powdery scent of cheap soap with pungent notes of chlorine and iron. The dull burn marks on his back now screamed in scarlet. Fresh bruises dotted his arms and neck. Hibari still panted lightly, and his hollowed-out expression did not change at all upon Fran’s return. For a moment Fran thought the battered prefect had been struck blind.

That is, until he mumbled, “…Smell’s gone…”

“He did it again before washing you?”

“…Before…during…after…” Hibari responded tiredly and pulled the still musky-smelling blanket up to his shoulders.

“…Want another tangerine?”

“Not hungry…not after that…disgusting…”

“I thought you said you were used to it.”

“The smell I’m used to… Mukuro’s fetishes, though… Let’s just say…he got really creative with the leftover bath water this time…” He winced a little and curled up into a little ball on his side, facing away from his visitor.

“Stomachache?”

“…Just sore…” he murmured bitterly, “Illusions shouldn’t be allowed to do that…”

Fran scratched about his head a few times and then started doodling in the dust on the floor. “…Guess I’ll let you sleep, then. I like sleep. Sleep is like chasing a cheese wheel down the mountainside without breaking your leg.”

“…Pfft…” Hibari didn’t have the energy to comprehend the comparison, but he figured it was positive. “You make it sound good… Dunno if I’m ready for another nightmare, though…”

“…Oh, is that what you meant by ‘never have another good night’s sleep’? Good. You scared me for a while. Nightmares are no biggie. I just kinda…will them away.”

Hibari blinked and perked up a bit. “You…you can do that?”

“Sure, why? Want me to shut yours up while you sleep?”

“Oh, man…” Hibari sighed dreamily. “…After a fortnight of being mutilated every time I sleep…that sounds amazing… But…”

“But what?”

“It probably won’t work if you have to stay in the room,” Hibari yawned. “I’m a ridiculously light sleeper.”

“Well, I don’t so…don’t let the bedbugs bite!”

Fran abruptly hopscotched out of the room leaving Hibari to stare torpidly at the empty doorframe for several long minutes afterward.

_So …wait what…he’s gonna do it?_

_That’s that?_

_No way can’t be that simple nothing ever is_

_ But _

_Seems like a nice kid_

_But he’s with Mukuro_

_ And yet _

_So weird is he for real is he even real?_

As his eyelids grew heavier, the prefect began to wonder if the weird little scamp had actually come back at all or if the whole scene was another cruel trick of Mukuro’s imagination to raise and promptly dash his hopes. Eventually, his brain tired of pondering and decided to chance joining his eyes in rest.

For once, the weightless black void that embraced him concealed no claws.

 

“Something’s wrong with Fran, _pyon_ ,” Ken lazed over the back of a ratty sofa, complaining to Mukuro, “The kid’s hardly said a thing all day. He’s just been sitting there eating chips and picking his nose.”

“Oya, Fran, if you excavate much deeper you’re gonna bleed,” Chikusa advised listlessly.

“Yeah, and then Mukuro-san will probably steal one of my tampons and shove it up your nose,” MM added snidely as she pruned her nails.

Mukuro looked up from his book, pensive, “You know…I’m gonna have to remember that idea.”

“Wait, no! Tampons are pricy!” MM whined. “That was supposed to be an idle threat…”

“Seriously, Fran, though, what are you so intent on?”

“Blocking nightmares. Huahhhh~!” He boxed the air and mimicked the battle cries of Bruce Lee with a comically expressionless face.

Mukuro glanced around. “…Ah, Hibari-chan’s.”

“Yep. Said he kept getting mauled in his dreams. He looked like he needed sleep. I like him better when he’s not cranky.” Fran’s unusual display of magnanimity gave Mukuro pause, not to mention a cause for concern.

“…Fu…well, from what little I saw, he seems to have taken a bit of a liking to you, too. Or at least he hates you less than the rest of us.” Mukuro sighed heavily, “…So…” he suddenly thrust his trident through Fran enormous tangerine hat with a surprisingly loud SHUCK noise, “I’m gonna have to ask you not to visit him alone anymore. And stop blocking his nightmares.”

“Huh? Why?” Fran cocked his head—not visibly disappointed, but curious as always. And, after seeing the tips of his master’s trident perilously close to the top of his skull, slightly nervous.

“Without divulging a dangerous level of detail, you’re throwing a spanner into the works, yo. You know how important the plan is to me.”

“OK, but what do the nightmares have to do with it?”

“The primary reason should be obvious, but the secondary reason is information. Sometimes I have to impart vital information on an instinctual level.”

“…OK,” Fran motioned as if he were surrendering. “Well it oughta work out real well, now. The nightmares will hit harder now that he thinks he’s caught a break.”

“Ku-fu-fu, well aren’t you devious, now. I like that.”

“I learned from the best,” Fran shrugged. “Dunno if I’m proud of it, though.”

“What was that?” Mukuro asked with quietly hostile undertones.

Fran looked him dead in the eyes, not at all challenging but with the piercing clarity of one who has seen too much for his age, and said, “You’re like a god with the way your plans always work out in the end, so I trust you and play along. That doesn’t mean I automatically like it. And right now I don’t.”

“But you won’t disobey me, will you?” Mukuro asked rhetorically, plucking his trident from his pupil’s headwear and gently prodding Fran in the chest.

“Nope, because I don’t have any better ideas.” Fran hopped up, saluted with his trademark blank stare and marched off to the makeshift kitchenette in the gutted remnants of a snack bar. “Okie-dokie, what’s on the menu? Cup ramen, cup miso, curry rice, or takeout? Oh, and there’s some canned fish, canned sausages, and half a box of _anpan_ singles.”

“I vote ramen, _pyon_ ,” Ken barked.”

“You. ALWAYS. Pick ramen,” Chikusa glowered. “I want curry, I’m tired of Chinese.”

“Toss me some _anpan_ for the road, I’m going back to my place,” MM called out. Fran obliged. “Fran, if you wanna get away from these guys you can sleep over tonight.”

“Nah, I’m cool as a cucumber.”

“Can I go instead?” Chikusa raised his hand, looking for all the world like a little boy forced to tag along while his mother tried on clothes.

MM was not impressed. “No,” she retorted, turned on heel, and strutted out. Chikusa heaved a disgruntled sigh.

“Anyone else want _anpan_ before I stuff it back in the cabinet?” Fran called out mechanically.

“ _Anpan_ is shit,” Hibari yawned, lumbering in from the opposite side of the room wearing essentially the same T-shirt-hoodie-jeans ensemble as the day before, but in slightly different colors. “Throw the canned tuna in with the curry rice. Got any veg?”

“Veg?” Fran cocked his giant tangerine head again.

“Vegetables. Carrots, onions, potatoes… The basics.”

“Shit’s prepackaged, yo,” Mukuro informed him.

“I know, shove it. I’m asking about the rest of the ingredients.”

“Not that kind of prepackaged, yo. The kind where **everything** but the rice is dehydrated and you just boil it and serve. We’re poor and we can’t get jobs because we don’t legally exist here, OK? All our best stuff is scrounged or stolen.”

“…Right.” Hibari clicked his teeth.

“But we will throw in a whole can of tuna just for our lord and master Hibari-chan,” Mukuro sneered, bowing in his seat. The target of his derision narrowed his eyes.

“Well, then, first demand as your lord and master: what’ve you got on Vepacitti since our last discussion?” Hibari folded his arms expectantly, considerably more invigorated than Mukuro had seen him for the duration of his stay so far. It secretly pissed the spiky-haired delinquent off that Fran’s intervention had worked so well.

“Fu…I think I found out at the library what kind of spiders his familiars are.” Chikusa meanwhile not-so-subtly tore the headphones out of their jack in the ancient boom-box and jammed them onto his head. “I believe they’re called happy-face spiders.”

“So basically you’ve accomplished nothing,” Hibari snarled, reaching for his deep pockets—and presumably his tonfa.

“No, I wouldn’t say that. It was a lead: happy-face spiders are only found in Hawaii. Rather than just wearing the shirt style, Vepacitti’s reincarnation may actually be Hawaiian. So I started browsing the local and regional news for someone or something out of Hawaii…and…”

“…And…?”

“Eh…it’s a bit of a stretch, but there is an art exhibition going on in Nagoya where this Paul Kinbara guy from Hawaii is touring hyper-realistic sculptures of humans emerging from driftwood. But then I had to leave because the library was closing.”

“…Hmm…not too far from here… Wood doesn't sound right, though. Look for fabric in his past works tomorrow.”

“So,” Mukuro leered, “you gonna reward me for a job well-done tonight, Hibari-chan?”

“More like job-half-assed. I might consider not fighting you every step of the way if you drop the ‘–chan.’”

“Aw, no blow-job?”

“I’ll bite it clean off.”

“You know, master,” Fran called out from the kitchen area, “If he eats your penis for dinner, the rest of us get more curry. It’s ready, by the way.”

“Bad Fran. No. Think about what you just said,” Mukuro chided, whacking Fran on the head with the ladle before helping himself to the curry first.

“Who said I’d eat it? I just said I’d bite it off,” Hibari retorted, scooping out a rice base for the thin curry. “But I could always take it home and feed it to my cats.”

“Ew, cats, _pyon_!”

Chikusa piped up. “Can I take my headphones off yet or are you guys still bringing up that disgusting shit with Vepacitti?”

“They’re done talking about Vepacitti, but I don’t think you’ll like their current conversation any better,” Fran cautioned.

“Forget it. I’ve got my food and your little gathering is an eyesore. I’m leaving.”

 

“…You know, one thing’s been bothering me since I shared it with you earlier…” Mukuro mused from the side of his futon. Hibari, splayed across the rest of it, pants pulled down to his thighs, shirt pushed up to his chest, and clearly irritated, didn’t answer. “…Oh, right, forgot.” The odd-eyed monster snapped his fingers and the skin on his captive’s face briefly seemed to writhe with something alien beneath.

At last the prefect growled his retort. “Son of a bitch…”

“Ku-fu-fu, you’re supposed to say ‘what is it, Mukuro-sama?’ but I guess I’ll forgive you this time. Anyway, I find it weird that Vepacitti’s familiars are oversized harmless spiders exclusively found in Hawaii. I’m pretty sure last I saw him in the Realm of Asura, his familiars were spiders, but not that kind. They were more like...back-to-back pairs of lion heads, one with 8-eyes and one with none, crawling around on 4 pairs of human arms.”

“What if there’s no connection between the natural habitat of his familiar and his place of origin. Ryohei’s familiar is a bloody kangaroo.”

“…Ooh. Good point. Shit.”

“Must you keep me paralyzed for this sort of discussion?”

“Oh, no, I’m getting undressed. I just got distracted by that thought. It’s getting colder again, so I thought we’d take tonight a little slower; try to stay under the covers more.” As he spoke he fussed with some chairs, a free-standing dustpan, a broom, clothespins, and a bunch of tattered blankets, slowly assembling a low-slung, haphazard but hopefully heat-trapping tent around their bed.

 “Plain old missionary style?” A tentative ray of hope leaked through Hibari’s façade of cynical stoicism. “Like normal people?”

The usual cold-sweat-inducing grin snaked over Mukuro’s face. “I was thinking more missionary with a dash of amateur acupuncture.”

Hibari’s heart sank. “…Two words no one should ever have to hear together…”

“Ku-fu-fu, No need to fret, I know where to put the needles. It’s just that real acupuncture needles are some 20 times pricier than they need to be. So…” he pulled a small plastic box out of the pocket in his popped-collar jacket hanging a short distance away. In the dim light all Hibari could see were a bunch of small glow-in-the-dark beads suspended in a dark grey mass, until Mukuro shifted and the grey mass caught some light from the camping lantern and shimmered silver. “…I got a 250-pack of these fun little ball-top straight pins on sale at Seiyu*. See? They glow in the dark!” (*T/N: Seiyu is like a Japanese Walmart.)

His soon-to-be-pincushion exhaled wearily and stared daggers into his 6-shaped pupil with the utmost bitter repugnance. “Just look me in the eye and answer me one thing, first.”

“What’s that?”

“Why the act?”

“What act?”

“Why do you bother acting like this is all in good fun?”

“As many times as you’ve come by my hand,” Mukuro started dismissively, “you can hardly say it’s not—”

“ **Cut the shit** ,” Hibari roared. “You know exactly how badly you’re hurting and humiliating me. And I know your only interest in getting me off is to make me feel worse about myself. Why bother acting all flirty and saying you love me when you clearly regard me as some horrid combination of sex toy and _katashiro_ *?”(*T/N: A _katashiro_ is like a paper scapegoat in the Levitican sense. In folklore it serves as a sort of lightning rod for misfortune that might befall others, or a reservoir for impurity and bad karma accumulated by the spell-caster to make it easier to destroy.)

Mukuro’s face suddenly seemed to age and contort with depravity, as if control over his inner Mr. Hyde were slipping. “Ku-fu-fu-fu… Oh, you who knows but one world and one life. I simply offer the purest love to the purest human.” His eyes narrowed and a rapacious grin slashed his face from ear to ear. He poked Hibari in the nose, lecturing, “There’s nothing cuddly about the purest things in the Realm of Man. It’s your fault for being shocked. Let’s see now…can’t have you squirming too much so…” with the aid of the trusty servants swimming in his victim’s blood, he forced Hibari’s arms over his head, hands together, and pushed his head back to expose his neck. Mukuro detached the business end of his trident and dug it slowly into the chewed-up scar between his victim’s neck and left shoulder, setting free slithering ribbons of possessed hemoglobin. He started gently waving his hands like an orchestra conductor and humming what sounded to Hibari like a jingle from a commercial. The blood snakes started weaving his bondage: a choker around his throat, Osage diamonds down his torso, loosely-woven fishnets up his arms and legs, and handcuffs roped to the back of his neck. Mukuro even thought to wedge the topless staff of his trident under Hibari’s knees; the bloody serpents lashed the prefect’s legs to that as well.

“This is familiar… Running out of ideas?” Hibari needled.

“Why mess with a good thing?” Mukuro smirked and immediately tore into Hibari’s mouth like he owned the place. Predictably Hibari bit his tongue at the first opportunity. Mukuro spat blood and retorted, “For that matter, why do you always look a gift horse in the mouth?”

“Your gift horses are always full of Trojans.”

“…I’ve changed my mind.” Mukuro scowled with disappointment. “This jaded curmudgeon look of yours isn’t cute at all.”

Hibari smirked bitterly and hissed, “You broke it? You bought it. Fix me or find someone else.”

“Ku-fu-fu, you sly birdie…you know I never back down from a challenge. In any case, you’re obviously not ready for these,” Mukuro glanced down at the pack of needles, first plaintively, then pensively, and then he muttered, “Well, maybe just a couple.” He popped open the box and, one-by-one, plucked out 6 needles, for which he used his upper left sleeve as a temporary pincushion. Then he slid the box across the floor and out of sight. “Like I said, we’ll take it slow. Real slow.” With a beckoning motion from Mukuro’s hand, more blood snakes rose up from behind Hibari’s head and started to weave a sheet across his eyes. The last thing Hibari saw was Mukuro’s grin, whispering, “Just close your eyes and feel.”


	11. Pricking Needles, Spinning Wheels

“Ne, Tsuna,” Yamamoto yawned, “are you feeling any better about tomorrow’s trigonometry midterm?”

Tsuna rolled his face across the coffee table from right cheek to left cheek. “All I feel right now is my brain frying like an egg. What time is it?”

“22:16,” Gokudera answered, overly enthusiastic. “Whoa, Juudaime! It’s dangerous to rest your eyes! You still have English 3 to study for!”

“Aaaaaaaagghhh….” Tsuna seemed to deflate even further.

“Don’t you get extended time for dyslexia?” Yamamoto asked.

“That only slightly helps with the written part. I am so screwed on the speech test!”

“Not to worry, _Juudaime_ , that’s what I’m here for! I’m fluent in English, too! There are lots of rhymes to help you remember how to spell, and I can teach you tricks to remember which language certain words were borrowed from. That helps, too.”

“I’m not a genius like you, though! You already know 3 languages and calculus. I’m even useless at the history that would help me learn English!”

“But you are a genius, _Juudaime_! At fighting! We just have to figure out how to teach you English in that context, right?”

“I could probably make up some word problems involving swordsmanship…or baseball…” Yamamoto mused.

“Nobody asked you!” Gokudera shot back. “Baseball’s got nothing to do with fighting, anyhow.”

“But a lot of the terms we use on the field are just English words written in _katakana_ , so that’s cool, right?”

“Just go back to work on your hyperbolic trig, man,” Gokudera gave their school’s leading pitcher a noogie.

“I need to study my English, too, though!”

“I don’t even remember which units are gonna be on the test,” Tsuna whimpered.

“McKinnon-sensei said the test would be 50% auxiliary verbs and contractions, 40% irregular verbs ending in t in past-preterit, and maybe 2 questions on appositives,” Gokudera counted on his fingers.

“I don’t even know the difference between… _pu…ret…er…rich*_ verbs and…crap, I can’t even remember what the other past tense is!” (*This is about how it would sound if a native Japanese speaker tried to pronounce “preterit” using only sounds and syllables native to Japan)

“The other past tense is past-participle, and for the love of god, will you quit your defeatist blubbering?” A spiky-haired toddler approaching early childhood slammed the sliding door to the den into its socket. His train-patterned footie pajamas made all the more jarring the way his pudgy, youthful features contorted into the buzz-killing glare of a hard drinker greeting the consequences of his lifestyle with the morning sun. He tugged irritably at his short side-curls which, with that horrid expression, made the boy look like a Nazi caricature of an Orthodox Jew’s child. “Honestly, the more you tell yourself you’re useless, the more useless you get. Stop being a loser.”

“Oh, hey Reborn-san,” Yamamoto perked up with an idea, “do you know any English?”

“I’m pretty good with it. I used to be better, but I haven’t had to use it much outside of plying my trade so the rest of my vocabulary might be a little rusty.” The side of the little imp’s mouth curled up. “I can teach you everything you need to say to avoid arrest, though.”

“Please don’t train me to be a hitman, too. Becoming a mafia boss is bad enough,” Tsuna groaned and stuffed his hands into the front pockets of his offensively mustard-yellow hoodie.

“No comment on that. Anyway, as long as you’re practicing English, you should try to hold a conversation in pure English.”

“About what? How we need to study English?” Tsuna had yet to lift head from the table. His fluffy brown mane was starting to hold the shape the table enforced.

“How about Christmas plans? That’s coming up in just a couple weeks, isn’t it? By the way, as your home tutor, I have a duty to facilitate and promote your learning in any way I can, so…” from somewhere in his tank engine PJs Reborn mysteriously produced a Glock 27, “Speak Japanese between now and 23:00 and I’ll shoot you. You get one warning shot a piece. I also reserve the right to chew you out in Japanese.”

“HIIIIII—!” Tsuna jumped up, hair flattened on one side, and released his trademark squeal. “OK, OK!” (*From here on out, watch the shapes of the quotation marks)

« Reborn is hard teacher, huh? » Yamamoto spoke slowly and deliberately.

« He’s crazy but his methods work, » Gokudera remarked easily, nodding. « So…Christmas plans… I have none. »

Tsuna scowled and concentrated until his ears looked ready to steam. « …But…you have…Shittopi-chan. No…date…for Christmas? »

Gokudera’s eyes slowly widened with realization. He clutched at his shaggy, ear-length bleached hair. « Oh shit! I forgot I actually have a girlfriend this year! What am I going to do?! (Ah. I used an auxiliary verb pair) »

« Ha-ha! How you—how do you forget girlfriend? » Yamamoto ribbed, feeling both a little too happy at his best friend’s slip-up and guilty that it pleased him so.

« Shut up, you (and stop forgetting your articles)! I’ve never had to think about a date before! It’s always been just _Juu_ —uh, the 10th! »

« Yamamoto, I…not understand what he say. »

"Can you correct his grammar, Yamamoto-kun?" Reborn asked, in Japanese. "In English, of course."

« Ehhhh… Oh, Tsuna, I think it is ‘I **do** not understand’, not ‘I not understand.’ »

« Good. And? »

« And…what? There was two mistake? »

"Yeah, the last word. He used it in present tense when it should’ve been past tense. You just made 2 yourself, but we'll start with no-good-Tsuna's. Yamamoto-kun or Tsuna-kun, what's the past tense of 'say'? Gokudera-kun, no helping."

« Ah… Ehehe… »

"Good grief. That should’ve been one of the first words you learned," Reborn shook his head. "Here’s a hint: it’s irregular."

Gokudera snorted, « As if that narrows it down. »

« Oh! » Tsuna started flapping his arms excitedly. « I know! ‘Sane,’ yes? »

« Wrong. » POW—Reborn shot the floor between Tsuna’s feet. « It’s ‘said.’ Say, said, will say. »

« HIIII— _GOMEN NASAI_ —! »

« No Japanese outta you. » PA-POW—Reborn fired twice more. One bullet splintered the leg of the coffee table and the other punched a hole through Tsuna’s frizzy hair.

« C’mon, Reborn, the 10th’s mom just bought that table! »

« No problem, I’ll buy her a new one for Christmas. Now, let’s all settle down and talk about that. Who’s getting what for who? »

« Whom. You meant ‘for whom.’ » Gokudera corrected Reborn.

« …Indeed I did. Good catch. Tsuna, you must have some ideas for Kyoko. And Nana. And all your guardians. »

« What mean ‘guardians’? »

« _Hogo-sha_. »

« …I go poor again… For Kyoko, I want get…uh…eh… » Tsuna drew wide arcs around the base of his neck, « Neck…pretty…thing. »

« Scarf? » Tsuna shook his head. « Necklace? »

« Yeah-yeah. And mama…maybe I get her new…uh…» he dug out his mittens and flapped them around « Like this but for…cooking…if not too much money. »

« Oven mitts, you mean. »

« I not know. »

« I know you don’t know. I was telling you the words. Anyway… Gokudera? You still haven’t said anything about your plans for Shittopi-chan. »

« Don’t rush me, I’m thinking… I think she’s getting bored of dinner dates, too. I gotta come up with something good and crazy. »

« When you were with Hibari, what do…did…you do? » Yamamoto asked, trying to help inspire him.

« Hah! You think I learned anything dating him? We gave it the old college try all of 2, maybe 3 times before we realized we were happiest only meeting for H-things and the occasional chat. Believe me, we tried the usual stuff. The only date we both sort of enjoyed was the one where we got into a fight with some local gangbangers and took ‘em out. Shittopi-chan’s not a fight-happy maniac like that. She gets into some weird shit, but I usually end up enjoying myself. »

« I so know nothing at now… »

« You can probably find weird enough date ideas online. »

« Date… _Dei-to_ … I saw something… I…think…(think, thinked, thank, thunk…) thunk it? »

« Thought, Tsuna, you thought. »

« Urgh…I thought…idea was good for Lambo…but maybe you like. You…put…hmm… » Tsuna growled a bit in frustration and glanced around, trying to find something string-like. Eventually he settled for the drawstrings on his hoodie. « You put things like this…between chairs and tables and things…and you…climb…through them…but you not can…touch. You play like you are…uh…um…ninja or…Cat’s Eye*? Maybe moneys are at other side…or something. » (*T/N: Crime drama manga about a femme fatale trio of art thieves)

« …Oh, it’s like you are in…uh…action movie and those things are… _Lei…za…s_? » Yamamoto guessed excitedly.

« That really sounds like it’s on the dumb cow’s level. » Gokudera muttered out of the side of his mouth, but quickly followed with his usual obsequious deference to Tsuna, « B-but if the 10th recommends it, I’ll definitely mention it to her! »

As usual, Tsuna simply accepted his self-proclaimed right-hand-man’s blandishment with a smile and a wave. « Is fine, really. No need. »

« Since you talked about Hibari, I remembered I haven’t saw— »

« Seen,» Reborn corrected before switching to Japanese, "That’s past-participle."

« …Haven’t seen Hibari at school since last week. He is sick again? »

« I don’t think so. He just up and disappeared. The VP of the disciplinary committee came and asked **me** if I knew where he was. He’s not the only one who’s gone, either. »

« I know. » Yamamoto crossed his arms pensively. « I worry because school put up…looking-for-child…papers for I think 11 other students. »

« I think…Haga, in math with us…is not here. » Tsuna mentioned haltingly. « Maybe Hibari knows something and…is gone to look for them. »

« You think it might be Wepa—…whip a-…the guy that sent the dolls? »

« Given the current state of affairs, I would be more surprised if it wasn’t him, » said Reborn.

« Not that I care that much if Hibari goes on a suicide mission, but…OK, fuck it, I do care a little. » Gokudera irritably dug out some nicotine gum and jammed one of the putty-colored square tablets in his mouth. « Reborn, permission to switch back to Japanese? I just realized something important and I don’t want the 10th to misunderstand. »

“…Permission granted.”

“I wouldn’t say it’s beneath his pride, but I’m pretty sure that guy didn’t notice 11 nobodies out of 800 students before the police did. I think Hibari going after Vepacitti himself is about the only thing we can rule out.”

“But remember, the last person to be attacked by his dolls was Hibari,” Yamamoto rebutted matter-of-factly. “That’s plenty motivation.”

“Yeah, but if he were still investigating, and he’d almost have to be, he wouldn’t leave the school for days at a time. He only does that when he knows exactly where he’s going. My point being, I don’t think he’s had time to find that out. He went off for something else, most likely.”

“He…might’ve been summoned,” Tsuna interjected.

“…Right. Shit.”

“Well, you all make valid points. From my experience in the field,” Reborn started twiddling his side-curl contemplatively, “what little I’ve seen of the enemy’s antics suggests that he’s the type who prefers to send sentinels to pick off his targets by ambush. A summons gives the intended victim more control of the situation than that type of predator is usually willing to cede. They only bother with the summons if they’ve amassed an army and feel like gloating about it. That said, I don’t think Hibari’s disappearance and that of the 12 civilian students are unrelated. Who do we know that knows our enemy better than anyone else?”

The three teenage boys responded in unison, “Mukuro.”

“Maybe we ought to pay him a visit ourselves.”

“It’ll have to wait until after the exams, though. But I’ll talk to Ryohei-nii-san tomorrow, see if Hibari shared anything chairman-to-chairman before he left…”

“Tsuna, quick, what’s one of the double-angle identities of cos2x?” Reborn suddenly demanded.

“Wha-wait…uh…2 sin x…”

“…Go on…?”

“…uh… Oh, the sine is squared!”

“And…?”

“…And what?” Reborn’s face slowly sank into his palm.

Gokudera filled Tsuna in, “Regrettably, the one you were aiming for was 1 - 2sin2x.”

“Please tell me you at least remember sin2x,” the tetchy toddler groaned, “That’s the easy one.”

“2sin2x, right?”

“Wrong.” Reborn pistol-whipped Tsuna across the back. The fluffy-haired teenager fell flat on his face. In the split second after his nose folded concertina style but before his teeth imploded into his sinuses, the ridges in the tatami met his lips in a forceful kiss that seemed to capture Tsuna’s heart. At any rate, he stayed face-down on the floor.

Yamamoto whispered out of the side of his mouth, “It was 2sinxcosx.”

“…I’ve already forgotten…every…single…thing we covered in trig!” Tsuna clutched his hair, curled up, and descended into blubbering.

The bleached-haired smoker to his right stuffed more nicotine gum in his mouth. He didn’t let it on, but for once even Gokudera’s patience with his boss was starting to wear thin, all the more so because he hadn’t had a cigarette since before dinner. The gum blunted the craving, but just didn’t slake it like a real cigarette. If only he could roll one massive cig from their obnoxious study guides, set it smoldering, and burn the length of it in one huff. The feel of the gum in his mouth was all wrong. He needed the heat on his lips and the ashy taste and the burn in the back of his throat… Oh, if only he could crack and window and light up.

 

Unbearable heat continued to build between his hips. A fishy taste lingered in his mouth from his partner’s forceful preparations, but he dared not swallow it for the sting of the needle piercing the front his throat. Hibari rocked harder against Mukuro’s loins, tense as piano wire and desperate to finish, but the end was nowhere in sight. How many times had the demon inside him milked him of his seed and filled him with its own? Five, six, maybe seven times now? Not that it mattered; Hibari could no longer tell if he was coming or going.* In any case, Mukuro seemed able to set his toes curling and his sperm flying just by fingering any one of his 6 piercings. At the slightest touch he recalled to his body’s lurid ecstasy the acute stings of the fat straight pins punching through skin, sinew, and nerve with uncanny accuracy. Needles tunneled through each blood-engorged nipple, and his perineal raphe crossways. The other 3 were buried to the hilt in his flesh, one each in the root of his penis, in the glans Prince Albert style, and in his trachea just below the vocal cords. That each perforation was, by Mukuro’s design, a veritable IV drip of pleasure boiled the battered prefect’s blood with loathing, both for his oppressor and himself. He truly could be made to feel anything Mukuro desired, not only in the absence on stimuli, but entirely contradictory to how he ought to experience his abuse. He could have made the act of gutting him, as on the night Hibari’s hell began, feel like descending into a hot spring with rose petals and therapeutic salts. But no, despite his declarations of love, the Corpse of 6 Paths** could not be satisfied with dissecting his prisoner like a frog painlessly, or flooding his unblemished body with inexplicable pain. The illusion, Hibari’s waking nightmare, had to be complete…except for tonight, since his prowess for pleasuring a partner, and by extension his virility, had been challenged. (*T/N: climaxing during sex is euphemistically termed “coming” in English, but in Japanese, the corresponding euphemism translates to “going;” **the literal translation of Mukuro’s full name)

The prefect could practically taste his own bitterness.

Though he barely held on for dear life, he pulled his upper body closer to Mukuro’s, thinking he’d prefer the bitterness of blood from Mukuro’s ear.

_Bite it_

_Wait bite if I but then won’t finish _

_Neither will won’t he bite_

_Wanna hear him scream_

_Make like Van Gogh style _

_Don’t wanna hurts so good so bad stop no don’t yes no shit_

_How—coming no not againNNNH_

_Feels like fucking octopus _

_-dare he how I don’t wanna like this but it I need_

_Where’ve you been all my life where was this the first time-_

_Sakura trees in the rafters sky high_

_-no there aren’t but there’s that stupid sofa_

_Fuck that sofa with a knife hard-hard-hurting hard—don’t wanna come anymore stAAHH_

_What’s my name don’t say it  no do if you do I’ll kill I’d kill for me this_

_Where’s my pride-_

_This look my ass pussy can do_

_-no fuck you with a dirty mop don’t use his names for ah shit fuUGH_

_Fine line between paradise and hell where I am on it over the line hell is heaven in bad company_

_Maybe company in general go away stop watching me  voyeur you just keep whacking keep whacking don’t stop watch me take it I can handle or am I dying_

_Fuck that’d be awesome this awesome awful bloody fuckingGUHHH_

_Wanna stop thinking why I can’t-can’t finish like this it can’t end like this can’t end but those needles they’re agony they’re nothing they’re electrifying and I oh it’s impossible but oh if only_

_If only what_

_That’s_

_Oh that could work  hurt like a bitch though_

Though wrung out of nearly every fluid, feeling, and free thought, Hibari willed his lolling head nearly upright. His bleary, half-lidded eyes wandered drunkenly on and off the right-hand side of Mukuro’s head, and he reeled himself in. A faint smirk crept across his face. He chortled voicelessly, pushing his skewered voice box to the brink of tearing.

“…What’s this?” Mukuro panted with a self-satisfied sneer, “…Has desire…finally driven you mad?” The sneer faded as his victim mouthed a silent, half-conscious reply beyond his limited ability to read lips. He relented and plucked the needle from the prefect’s throat. “What’s that?”

Hibari panted feebly but a certain note of triumph into his enemy’s ear, “…I almost…pity you… Had you…made me feel like this…that first night…I might’ve considered you……for half a second…”  He’d intended to dig the knife in deeper, but his body could take no more of such pleasurable punishment. He fainted onto Mukuro’s shoulder.

The spiky-haired miscreant, for his part, might not have finished if not for the stimulus of warm breath in his ear.

“…Pity me? You?” The sobering resolution soured his formerly enraptured face. “…You little…no. Just no,” he muttered angrily and threw down the limp, unconscious body of his plaything. “You have no fucking clue. I could almost laugh. In fact I will laugh. Ku-fuh.” He forced a haughty cackle and left the warmth of his blanket fort. He ambled out of the room in a state resembling drunkenness, repeatedly checking over his shoulder and descending further into a real fit of half-crazed giggling every time he turned away.

 

“Oya, Pineapple-headed fucker! We know you’re in here! Come out!”

“Gokudera,” Tsuna grabbed his subordinate’s arm and admonished, “He might not have done anything this time! We don’t wanna fight him unless we have to.” Gokudera briefly looked shamefacedly at his shoes and clicked his teeth.

“My sincerest apologies, Juudaime.”

This time Tsuna called out into the gloom of the half-finished, half-buried ruins of the Kokuyou Healthy Land mall, “Oy! Mukuro-san! We just need to ask a couple of questions! We’re missing some people and wanna know if you have any leads! Hello?”

“Will you shut up?” Chikusa lumbered out of the shadows and leaned against the nearest graffiti- and poster-encrusted column with his typical bad posture. “Mukuro-sama isn’t here right now. Don’t wake Fran and Ken, OK?”

“Oh, bull—?”

“Gokudera…” Tsuna blocked his groupie’s way with his arm. “Where is he?”

“He went to the flea-market,” the hunched, bespectacled boy responded indifferently. Already his attention had mostly drifted to his yo-yo.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?” Chikusa just shrugged. “OK…then, I guess we’ll ask you for now.”

“About the missing people?”

“Yeah.”

“Who’s missing?”

“18 students at our school and counting,” Gokudera answered gravely.

“That includes Hibari-san. You remember him, right?”

“How could I forget?” Chikusa snarled with contempt. “Anyway, I have answers, but you don’t wanna hear ‘em.”

“Don’t tell us what we do or don’t wanna know!” Gokudera reached past Tsuna and yanked Chikusa out of his lazy pose by the collar. “This is urgent! Lives are at stake!”

“Gokudera, stop—!”

“Not anymore,” Chikusa responded solemnly.

Tsuna’s face blanched. “…You mean… They’re all dead?!”

“No way… that idiot…? Can’t be—!” Gokudera started to shake.

“Hibari’s fine. Him aside, I couldn’t tell you one way or the other. All I know is, Vepacitti got them and they probably can’t be saved in that state.” Chikusa’s bar-coded cheeks turned sallow. “You’ll have to ask Mukuro or one of the others to repeat my description, though. I can’t talk about it without puking.”

“…Fair enough…” Tsuna switched gears sympathetically. “But you said Hibari’s fine? Where is he?”

Chikusa paused momentarily. “…Not here. That’s where.”

“Don’t be funny, ass-wipe!” Gokudera roared.

“You heard him,” a familiar low baritone reproved the 2 visitors from the stairwell some distance behind Chikusa. “I’m ‘not here,’” Hibari repeated, using finger quotes.

Gokudera heaved a sigh of relief before flashing him a scowl of disbelief. “What the hell are you doing? I—we—everybody’s been freaking out because you’re one of the missing! The whole school’s scared shitless because they think nobody’s left that’s strong enough to stop whoever’s behind the disappearances!”

“I’m working on it. Let’s just say I’m trying to hasten my liberation here and leave it at that.” Hibari started to turn back and draw up the hood of his jacket, plainly averse to showing his face any longer. “I strongly advise you both to leave before Mukuro returns. Or before I snap and bite you dead.”

Hibari’s silver-haired ex mouthed interrogatives and expletives but no sound came out. His boss, however, could easily ask the obvious.

“Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

“Assuming school’s bugged.”

“You could’ve texted—!”

“Get out.”

“But—!”

“ **Get** **out** or I’ll bite you to death.” Even in the late-afternoon shade, his tonfa gleamed bright and clear. “And not a word about my location to anyone or you’re dead when I get back.” Gokudera seemed ready to challenge his assertion, but Tsuna squealed, grabbed him, and bolted anyway.

Chikusa scanned the grounds unblinkingly for some time after they left. “…I don’t think they brought any unwanted guests with them this time, but…”

“I’d start packing your bags anyway, Glasses,” Hibari headed back inside, drawing his hoodie tighter about his neck.

_So …it’s probably tonight or never…_


	12. Cuckoo's Nest Politik

“I still don’t buy that you went where I told you Chikusa had been held and didn’t find even a trace,” Hibari muttered, sprawled naked under the covers in Mukuro’s “love” nest. Mukuro sat hanging off the edge, fiddling with something in a bag.

“Well, it’s not like it was completely empty, but I didn’t think it was anything new or important.”

“Lay it out.”

“Well, I found the dried blood and desiccated scraps of flesh on the 4th floor, but we already knew that’d be there. Other than that, all I found was a few unrecognizable rags, part of a hat, and a baseball bat.”

Hibari sat up and leaned in with intense focus. “Describe it. The bat, I mean.”

“Uh…metal…mostly black and dark silver…with something dark green on the end?”

“Was it a cartoony Godzilla-looking thing?”

“Now that you mention it, I think so.”

“Shit," Hibari pinched his short nasal bridge and sighed hard, "that’s one our baseball team’s bats.”

“You guys can afford customized bats?”

“Nah, we just buy the standard Mizuno ones and stick little school mascot decals on them. So they don’t walk off with our competitors.”

“Ah.”

Hibari sighed heavily and mumbled, unsure if he wanted Mukuro to hear, “I guess if Yamamoto were one of the missing, Sawada and his big-mouthed muscle would’ve said something earlier.”

“What’s that?”

“Nothing.”

“How does your school get away with using Godzilla as a mascot?”

“Two reasons: one, we’re called the ‘Giants’; two, we’re not rich or famous enough to be worth the lawsuit.”

“Ku-fu-fu. Nami Giants*…” Mukuro chuckled at the embedded oxymoron.* “Well, then, I’m done with my preparations. Did you do yours?” (*T/N: the “nami” in Namimori means “medium-sized”)

“After that awful Mexican shit you brought for lunch, I didn’t have to.”

“Aw, is that why you skipped dinner?”

“Pretty much.”

“Well I’ve got the perfect thing to cool you off after the chili spice.”

“If you shove an icicle into me, I’ll snap your dick off and feed it to you.”

“Oh, no, I’m cold enough already,” Mukuro pulled the heavy plastic bag onto the mattress, rummaged around inside it, and extracted a rather large polished stone egg, perhaps varnished granite, dripping with something unctuous. “Isn’t it pretty? I found a set of 5 at a yard sale on the way back.”

Hibari rolled his eyes and exhaled disgustedly. “And they’re all going in my ass, aren’t they?”

“Yep.”

“…If you have your way.”

Mukuro crawled one-handedly as close to his target as Hibari’s legs would allow. “I think you mean ‘when.’ Pick your poison: sakura, blood snakes, brute force…?”

“You’ve no idea how long I’ve been waiting for you to try brute force,” Hibari smirked and cracked his neck.

“Kuh-HAH! I knew you were a masochist at heart!” Mukuro’s free hand clenched. A wave of nauseous writhing sensations rippled through Hibari’s body and immediately after, his muscles gummed up. He could only stare as Mukuro’s stone-loaded arm arced swiftly but elegantly toward his face. The backs of the thug’s knuckles collided with Hibari’s right ocular orbit with a brain-rattling smack. The prefect hit the futon seeing stars in one eye and, for a short time, almost nothing in the other. Mukuro sat back on his heels and cheerfully poked his human punching bag in the newly-forming bruise. “Aw, you thought I’d pick just one? You give me too much credit.”

Of course, though he entertained the glimmer of hope for a split second, Hibari didn’t actually expect a fair fight, or anything that didn’t facilitate Mukuro’s twisted whims for that matter. He expected his weaknesses to be exploited. He encouraged it, banked on it. There was more at stake than his already-tattered honor. He had to prevent Mukuro from treating him too nicely—perhaps it was cowardice talking from beneath a mask of pride, but if he could keep his head, he was pretty sure he'd sooner relive that first night in hell every night for the rest of his life than go home with Stockholm Syndrome.

As with the previous nights, Mukuro gnawed the scar on Hibari’s left shoulder until he drew blood. Tonight he commanded the slimy serpents bubbling forth to bind Hibari’s arms together wrist-to-wrist down the entire length of his forearms. Meanwhile, with no further preparation, he threw Hibari’s legs over his shoulders and forced the first lubricated stone egg deep into his cat’s* large intestine. Hibari shuddered and shifted uncomfortably as the egg inched deeper inside him under its own weight. The second egg, made of green marble, and the third, made of banded lace agate, were also unceremoniously inserted as far as Mukuro’s fingers could reach and then left to sink in further at an achingly slow pace. Their weight was suffocating. Upon hearing the stony clacking of Mukuro digging around in the egg bag for the 4th, the prefect finally pleaded for restraint. (*T/N: The Japanese word for cat, _neko_ , doubles as a word for the receptive partner in homosexual sex.)

“Ngh…these rocks are…pulling my insides out of place…”

“No they’re not, they’re only like half a kilo each,” Mukuro dismissed and shoved in the fourth egg, made of dolomite.

Hibari stifled a moan. “…If this…unnh…leaves me incontinent…I’ll shit on you first…!” Mukuro paid no mind and dug out the last egg, a solid nugget of jasper.

“You can take it, just…one…more… There we go.” Content with his handiwork, Mukuro flipped Hibari over, crawled around in front of him, and unzipped his pants. “OK, now suck me off. Ah, keep those hips up. Don’t lay an egg til I finish. Ku-fu-fu…”

“Urgh…make me…”

Mukuro sighed, “I guess you’d do a shitty job if I didn’t hold your hand through it,” and took control of his victim, ensuring he provided the most expertly seductive and degrading deep-throat possible. The abuser lasted less than 4 minutes before shuddering bodily and choking the abased prefect with his seed. As soon as Mukuro released him, Hibari keeled over, taut with pain.

He panted, “They…have to come out…they’re coming out…coming…com—mnngh!”

“Ku-fu, indeed, you look like you’re going to pop soon. Here, sit up and lean back against me,” Mukuro pulled the flushed and trembling Hibari back against his chest. While suckling at the sides of his neck, he pried Hibari’s legs apart and started giving him a hand job. “Now push…”

“Don’t…fuckin…treat this like…birth…!”

“It’s not that different,” Mukuro whispered in his ear and licked it. “I remember…my life in the State of Animals…” he alternated between reminiscing and kissing the side of Hibari’s sweat-glossed throat, “I was an asp… A female asp… And I suffered the egg-laying process countless times…before my violent death… Trampled underfoot by an elephant. Like I always say, life sucks, then you die, then you come back and it sucks some more.”

However, torturous spasms preoccupied the revenant’s presumed listener. With a short, sharp, rasping groan, he delivered the first egg.

“Ku-fu-fu, good job. One down, four to go.”

“…You’ll pay…” Hibari wheezed, “…I’ll…bite you…to—ungh!” The second egg exited his body with a similarly vicious convulsion. So much sweat poured down his torso that he could scarcely feel the pre-cum leaking down his shaft through Mukuro’s fingers. The third egg followed the second with relative ease, but the fourth seemed to be stuck at a particularly agonizing angle. He cramped until his toes curled, his eyes ran with tears, and every throbbing blood vessel in his body seemed ready to burst through his skin. Finally, at once, he and the penultimate egg released.

“Nice timing, yo,” Mukuro cajoled, smearing Hibari’s face with his own sperm. “And then there was one.”

“…I d-…I don’t want…ca-…n…t…anymore… Too deep…”

“No problem, I have plunger.” Fingers pried Hibari open, but rather than making way for the last egg, they lifted the newly truant prefect at the hips and dropped him roughly on Mukuro’s erect member. Mukuro didn’t appear to mind that his second head kissed solid rock at the end of every thrust. Like a marginally overlarge piston in an organic cylinder, the egg pumped up and down, echoing the strokes of the human crankshaft it danced upon. The hapless mount felt as though 2 people were bucking into him ever-so-slightly out of sync. It reminded him of one of Mukuro’s tricks from the day his waking nightmare began, and that set his teeth on edge.

“…’s getting…more stuck…!”

“I…know…what I’m….doing…” Mukuro grunted between thrusts.

“…Mother…fucker…!”

“Almost…there…ah-…ha-…Hibari-chan-…AH—! …Ha…ha…phew…OK… There, see?” Mukuro pulled out, “Lubricant. I’ll have it out in short order.” For a solitary precious moment, as he gently lowered Hibari to the futon and caressed his victim’s hair, a grim, distant look flitted over his face. It vaguely resembled—could it be—reflection upon past or future actions?

But his conscience was as thoroughly subjugated as his rival writhing on the secondhand mattress. He punched Hibari in the pit of his stomach repeatedly until the last egg popped out, slicked with nearly every possible bodily fluid.

The battered prefect curled up into a little ball of pain, trying to inhale without retching. Mukuro paid him no mind, not even as a living thing. It seemed pummeling his whipping boy gave him yet another hard-on. So he moved the blood snakes binding Hibari’s arms to his legs, lashed his thighs tightly together, and masturbated through them. His makeshift sex-toy didn’t have the energy to fight it, or even to protest. But as Hibari's awareness faded into oblivion, he did sympathize a bit more with his mother somehow.

 

Five hours passed before the prefect roused from his blackout, and another hour elapsed before he could muster the strength to stand despite the raw sting piercing him from the sacrum up well past his kidneys.

Mukuro also stirred. “Mmm…where you going…?” he mumbled dreamily.

“…Toilet…” Hibari murmured.

“Leave my toilet on the Ferris wheel…” Mukuro sighed and slipped back into his carefree slumber. Hibari might’ve chuckled if it were anyone but that demon. Instead, he hobbled to the bathroom in a silent stupor, his mind sluggish and fogged but for a single, ponderous thought:

_…This is it…_

Though only a couple hours before dawn, he went through the motions of preparing for bed as if on autopilot, or trying to start the night over. Toilet. Floss. Brush teeth—he nearly forgot the tap water could be deadly. Luckily there was a tiny dribble of water left in the ancient cooler on the counter top, though he often wondered if it were really any safer, or if it rather than the Mexican fast food had done the number on him earlier.

He couldn’t be bothered to think about that anymore. Not when he could be dead before his latest inkling of paranoia came to fruition.

He gargled, spat, and tried to sort of rub the remaining toothpaste off his brush. It didn’t work too well. But then he realized it was about to be a murder weapon and only had to be clean enough to smuggle back to Mukuro’s makeshift bedroom in his clothes. A scrap stuck in the side of the used paper towel receptacle served to dry it off, and he sheathed the filed handle in the waistband of his slacks and covered it with his shirttail. He hadn’t bothered to bring PJs. They were dead weight, as far as he was concerned. The comfy parts of the uniform he arrived in did just fine. Better than fine, in fact: they were a much-needed lifeline to the normalcy and sanity he left behind. And by god, if he was going to die, he would die in his pride and joy. His uniform was the cloak to his dagger and, if need be, his funeral garb.

Somehow dramatizing every little detail of his endgame took the edge off.

_OK_

_Easy does it…_

_Not too quiet…_

_Not too loud…_

_Natural act natural so unnatural_

_No worries if he’s a little awake just be fast wait not yet just flop in there lay there a bit maybe shift a little make yourself comfy_

Though cold sweat beaded on his brow, Hibari padded back to his torture chamber as if too tired to care.

“Mmm…what took ya…?” Mukuro mumbled.

“Ngh…” the prefect mentally clambered for an appropriate answer. Fortunately, a slight misstep provided the painful inspiration. “Three words…Stop. Coming. Inside.”

“…Hnng…then…paternity test…when baby comes out…” Mukuro yawned.

“…the fuck,” Hibari muttered, shaking his head and crawling back into bed. Mukuro’s dreamily incoherent rambling momentarily blindsided him with its absurdity. The thought crossed his mind that Mukuro might know his plan and that this apparent sleep-talking was just to throw him off.

Or lure him into a false sense of security.

Or was he about to murder a man so wrecked in the head his mystified dying face might haunt him the rest of his life? What’s it worth?

Would this free him? What would that mean?

What did any of this mean?

He shifted in bed uncomfortably. His fingers quietly curled around the dull head and neck of the toothbrush, as his other hand might soon clench Mukuro’s neck. If he could get up the nerve.

_Longer you wait harder it’ll be less time spent a free man_

_Breathing’s getting faster harder sweat give me away_

He flopped his left hand up on the pillow as close to Mukuro’s head as he could within the limits of his nighttime vision. Anything, everything he could do to expedite the process mattered. He brushed his target’s hair just slightly.

“Mn…wha-s this…your head or mine…?” Hibari slurred quietly, trying to keep it realistic, and shifted his hand just enough to not feel that spiky hair anymore. But it was still close enough to grab in less than the blink of an eye.

“Mm-hmm…” Mukuro just sighed.

Hibari bent a leg. Nothing unnatural, just enough to load his lunge.

_Now now NOW DO IT NOW_

The impulse rippled across Hibari’s body from fingertip to fingertip: the left hand yanked Mukuro’s head back by the hair as he swung himself over and plunged the toothbrush shank into Mukuro’s carotid artery with the right. Mukuro’s eyes bulged in shock and his attempt at a gasp gave way to a sickly gurgle. But Hibari paused only long enough to knock aside his victim’s flailing arms and rear back for a second strike. And a third, and a fourth…and sometimes he dragged his improvised weapon through the flesh for good measure.

_DIE DIE DIE MOTHERFUCKER DIE BLEED OUT AND DIE AND ROT ON SATAN’S COCK_

The head boy quickly lost count of the stab wounds he’d inflicted, and his target had long since stopped moving when Hibari finally dropped his shiv and took stock of the damage. Quivering, his fingers dipped into the neck wounds and felt their contours. He could feel the blood bubbling out, slightly under pressure even. In some places, it felt like the neck raggedly split in two.

The white fog of rage slowly melted from Hibari’s mind, burned off by initially feeble but slowly strengthening rays of hope. A nervous chortle bubbled out of his throat. He didn’t even know he could make that sound, and he didn’t care. He let it out a little harder.

“Heh…ha ha…ha-ha-ha! I did it,” he laughed breathlessly. “Ha-ha! I did it! I’m free! I’m alive and I’m FREE—!”

GASHUNK

Such was the sickening noise that stopped his delirious self-congratulations cold: the familiarly egregious sound of flesh parting around metal. It doused Hibari in a glacial chill that silenced all sensation except for a line of 3 searing pains blooming in his abdomen.

The light of a hurricane lamp flickered on behind him. Though his body cast a shadow over it, he could see the illuminated walls reflecting in the source of his latest agony: a trio of steel tines jutting from his stomach. Stiffly, haltingly, he turned his head to see who was at the other end of the trident, though he was fairly certain he knew. Erasing the last shadow of a doubt just somehow seemed painful beyond even the twinge of being speared. But alas, the corner of his felid eye absorbed the truth.

Rokudo Mukuro stood at the other end, next to the hurricane lantern. And the corners of his stiff grin trembled in fury.

Hibari mouthed “no” repeatedly, shaking his head, but he had no breath to give voice to his protests.

“I thought you might pull something like this…” Mukuro started through gritted teeth. “Even if it was to be a spur in my flank, you coming here on your own to do anything but kill me… I knew it was too good to be true. That’s why I never let myself sleep in the same room as you. Not even once. Look down.”

The human kebab turned back to where moments ago he’d have sworn he felt a sticky, bloody corpse. But it was only a ruined beanbag. And there was no longer any blood on him but his own. He coughed. A few more dots of red blossomed on his thighs.

He thought he’d prepared himself to die if his plan failed, but the reality crushed him like an anvil. No aspect of it more so than that, looking back, he should have anticipated that his failure was assured from the very start. Terror could not possibly cover his feelings right then; there was too much uncertainty in fear, too much room for hope. What filled him now was abyssal dread, bottomless despair. Mukuro was the last person he’d ever see, that much he now knew. The only question was for how long his death would drag on.

He could utter nothing but a choked moan as Mukuro hoisted the trident, with him impaled on top, onto his shoulder and grabbed him by the legs for better leverage. Despite his failed assassin’s weight, the illusionist marched toward the nearest staircase and arduously began to climb.

“…Just like this…I have carried…the burden…of love…for so long…” Mukuro panted. “I’ve understood it…found it…less than worthless…yet still I fell…prey… And for what…?! That was vicious, yo…even for you… Obviously…you must…be punished… And so must I…for failing…to heed…my own wisdom…” Two and a half stories they climbed, each colder than the last. Icy wind hissed menacingly through the cracks in the door to the rooftop. Mukuro, heaving from the climb, had to ram it open with his shoulder.

Though upside-down with his remaining blood pressing at the backs of his eyeballs, Hibari could see a fine dusting of new-fallen snow shimmering on the tarmac by the light of the third quarter moon. Tiny clumps of white powder huddled like dust bunnies in the corners and next to the various ventilation shafts.

Mukuro trudged over to a rather narrow space between a commercial-sized water tank and the chain-link fence lining the edges of the rooftop. With an enormous grunt, he let Hibari and trident tip off his shoulder and clash against the fence. He pushed the tines into the mesh of wire. At the other end of the pole arm he jimmied and jostled and kicked until it was firmly wedged in the tank’s supportive scaffolding. The 6-eyed sadist plodded back and forth from Hibari’s side to the blunt end of his trident lifting and adjusting until Hibari was firmly staked to the fence, feet dangling just centimeters off the ground. Then he stood back to evaluate his handiwork and collect his breath. Apparently satisfied, he stuffed his bare hands into his underarms for warmth.

“This…is where…you will stay…while you reflect on your actions,” Mukuro huffed puffs of steam. “Ku-fu-fu. And you’ll forgive me for not watching you because…it’s cold. Try not to struggle. You’ll make your wounds bigger.” With that, he turned on heel, strutted back to the door, and slammed it behind him.

 

Seconds turned to minutes, minutes to hours, and to Hibari, all passed like eternity in the lowest of the Cold Narakas. Long past nipping at his nose, Jack Frost now chewed his limbs and face to the bone.

In only the first few moments of blustery silence Hibari figured out that since he wasn’t succumbing to shock, the trident skewering his guts was probably an illusion. It took him longer to teach himself how to breathe despite the spikes and how to stand barefooted on the frozen wires. Tasting bile in his renewed fury, he struggled for an unreal sensation to latch onto, something to help him break the grip of delusion. If anyone could find a flaw in the illusion of dying by now, it ought to be him.

Unfortunately, the first flaw he found was the one in his plan. It didn’t matter how fake the illusion seemed. Mukuro still gripped his nerves and senses with the blood snakes. The illusion was self-sustaining. He would have to contend with it as if it were real.

First he had to get off the trident. At this point Hibari retained enough rationality to realize the trident was longer than the space between the fence and the water tank. Had he possession of his tonfa, he’d have simply whacked the trident in half. But his bare hands didn’t have that kind of force behind them, especially not thrown behind his back. The tank obviously wasn’t going anywhere, but at least the fence gave somewhat. Trouble was, he had to go backward to move forward. He had to force the trio of tapered tines the rest of the way through his back and widen the already gaping holes.

A few deep breaths later, he shoved. The tines burrowed deeper into his flesh, displacing a ragged, rasping howl of agony. Quickly his spine met with the crossbar holding the trident’s tines. At last the fence began to bend. But it put up a stiff resistance, and soon he had to stop and take the pressure off his back so he could breathe.

Dim hope powered him through several more attempts, each feebler than the last as the early stages of hypothermia set in. Even the blood pouring down his stomach ran cold and thick. Harder and harder he shivered until he could no longer lift himself up to push back. In one slip, the spikes tore up to his rib cage, and he was finished. After that it was all he could do to keep the weight off his diaphragm so he could breathe.

Disarmed and exposed, the wires girding the fence ate into his fingers and toes. His uncontrollable trembling swallowed up the remains of his brief resurgence of hope, leaving in its place a more profound despondence than ever before. His body gradually betrayed him in his hour of direst need, first to Mukuro, but now to nature. The wounds might’ve been illusory, but the leisurely onset of a protracted, ignoble death was achingly real. He knew he wasn’t in his right mind when thoughts of impending expiry strayed to cheated resentment that he’d been denied a swift demise in a blaze of battlefield glory. He would simply freeze to death with only the Moon to bear witness.

A handful of tattered thoughts fluttered about in his cold-addled brain.

_It can’t end this way_

_It can’t how dare he_

_Just too cruel for teenagers_

_Monster you monster don’t you fear another you hunting you down_

_If I ever get off here_

_But I won’t_

_I can’t_

_But it can’t be I_

_I can’t_

_Can’t_

Chill and lividness filled him with such tension that he banged his head against the fence to ease it.

“ARGH—GRGH—DYRGH—GYAGH—FUCK—FUCK—FUCK—!” he grunted furiously upon each stinging impact. Again and again his forehead struck the wires until blood ran into his eyes and his brow ridge throbbed. He ground to a breathless halt and noticed with a pang of terror in his gut that his shivers were fading into crippling weakness. He struggled to keep his feet on the fence since there was no way his fingers would hold. But he was tired. So very tired.

Yet, though his head ached, his eyes burned, and the whole of his screaming body craved sleep, he couldn’t bear to let his eyes so much as rest. Because he might never reopen them. And too late he realized, more than just under these circumstances, he really didn’t want to die. Now that he stared Death in the face long enough to get a good look, he could see Its bottomless leer, Its half-mask of maggot-infested meat, Its towering, overwhelming visage. Its embrace looked so much sweeter from afar and from too close to focus. Now it brought him to tears.

“…No…I can’t…don’t wanna…this can’t…I……mum…dad…dad, help……h-help me…” he sobbed, “…I’m sorry…! …d-dad, p-…please…why’d you leave……I can’t…I ca-……ugh……ngh…I………hngh…”

Hibari couldn’t weep for very long. He didn’t have the energy left. It ran out with his blood, and soon, delirium flowed in its place.

Twilight faintly illuminated a dangling body, eyes rolling, snot and saliva freezing, blood crystallizing all down its legs, barely animated by a single thought reverberating through the dimming sea of scarlet drowning his mind.

_…I’m taking you with me…_


	13. Ghost in the Flesh

“ROW ROW FIGHT DA POWAH!” a relative bear of a man with a punch-perm and a chin-strap beard belted loudly, slapping the steering wheel of his late-90s Toyota 4Runner in time with the beat. His fellow film major, a twig of a man with thin, oily hair and a snaggletooth, just held their equipment and stared straight ahead, scowling in exasperation.

“Dude…do you have anything on this mix tape that ain’t from an anime?”

“Nope.”

“Tch,” the much thinner passenger clicked his teeth. “Just promise me Doraemon isn’t on here, too.”

“Naw, but I got Haruhi.”

“Shoot me.”

“It’s a classic! There are videos of Americans dancing to it!”

“Yeah, 50 guys in a prison.”

“You dragged me halfway through Kokuyou at 3AM get your time-lapse of the Geminids. Shut up and let me have my fun.”

“Fine…”

“Oh, hey, that’s weird. There’s one little fog cloud just sitting on the bridge.”

“That reminds me—”

“I know, I got us across it without skidding on the way out, I’ll get us back the same way.”

“You gonna go back to the dorm and sleep a few hours after this?”

“Naw, I gotta study for that test in civ. 2. I'll sleep after that.” The burly driver squinted as they pulled onto the bridge and headed into the fog cloud.

“I have notes from last year. (Creepy in here.)”

“Nobody can read your—MOTHER OF FUCK!” Suddenly, the van driving through the ground-level cloud came up on a humanoid silhouette. They swerved, skidded on some black ice, and—

“OHSHITOHSHITOHSHIT—OW, DAMMIT!”

—careened into a light post.

While the duo sat collecting their breaths and their wits, the cloud moved on and figure was nowhere to be found.

“Ho-…Holy shit…my dad’s gonna kill me…”

“The-the-there was a guy standing there, right?” the passenger stammered, “I mean, you were freaking out before you hit ice, right?”

“Y-y-yeah, there was a guy… Where the hell…?”

“Dude, get out, the engine’s smoking and my door is blocked!”

“Here, pass me the camera…” The husky one tucked their school-issue camera under one arm and pulled his buddy out with the other. “You panicky idiot, that’s just steam coming off the engine.”

“Lemme see the camera… Oh good…” the scrawny one heaved a sigh of relief. “I thought the airbag cracked the lens.”

The bearded one kicked the wheel. “Mine didn’t even deploy.”

“You have one built-in,” ribbed the snaggletoothed one.

“Shove it—WHOA!” the hairy one skidded on another patch of black ice and nearly fell into a split. “D’oh, my nards…!”

“Acrofatic.”

“Shut. Up.” He staggered to his feet, rubbing the insides of his barrel-thighs.

“Dude, check it out! The ice makes tracks!” the bony one pointed down the largely empty streets. A slick of ice patches meandered from the road to the sidewalk, with a few jigs and jags around uneven pavement.

“My brain’s telling me not to stick my head into this…but my gut’s telling me ‘follow it.’”

“Yeah…me too. Could be good mystery footage.”

“Well, one of us has to stay with the van.”

“You’re the driver. Plus you just about split your taint.”

“…I really hate the way you put it, but you’re right. Don’t chicken out on me if you find our ghost, B.” The driver gave his partner a hearty slap on the back and sent him on his way.

“OK…SD card in place, mic on…don’t screw this up, Ebisu…” Filming began on the opposite street corner to the bridge dividing Namimori from Kokuyou, where the frosted trail settled more firmly on the sidewalk. Scarlet shone next to the word “REC” and Ebisu’s face filled the preview screen. “Hi all, Kotomaru Ebisu here from Namimori Community College. Sorry if I’m a little shook up. My partner in crime and I just crawled out of a fender-bender. We ran into a fog bank on the bridge from Kokuyou, saw a figure in the road, and skidded on…” the camera turned toward the sidewalk and panned down the street, “…this. This is no ordinary patch ice, my friends. I mean, look at it, it’s a coherent trail of ice wandering down the sidewalk. If you step back it even kinda looks like smudged footsteps. So…I’m about to follow it and see where it leads. With any luck I might catch up to our mysterious figure in the fog. Or maybe that’s if my luck runs out. We’ll see. Ebisu out.”

Ebisu set out at an easy pace, but soon noticed silvers of brassy orange morning sunlight skipping across the rooftops of the various shops and apartments. The possibility the trail melting away quickened his pace. So too did the fact that the few other people milling about seemed to think of it only as a nuisance to be stomped, broken up, and kicked aside. Had nobody else seen the figure or the cloud that might’ve laid the trail down?

He needn’t have worried. The trail turned a corner onto a side-street 2 blocks down and immediately plunged into fog. Ebisu flipped out the preview screen and resumed recording.

“Ha…Well… That was quick,” he panted into the mic. “So I found a lone cloud creeping through the streets leaving a trail of ice. Spooky. I don’t really wanna go in there. I mean, I **really** don’t wanna go in there. But it’s my journalistic duty, I guess.” He turned the camera toward himself and dictated melodramatically, “If I don’t make it out, I love you, mom; love you too, dad; and little bro…just don’t sell my Strat. Keep it in the family, for me. …OK…and here we g—!?”

A low, pained growl cut him off, followed immediately by a sharp crackling noise. An enormous white owl burst from the cloud top, looped over, and darted ahead. The cloud too seemed to lurch forward. And it hissed.

Ebisu gulped hard. “I’m about to dive headlong into a fog with a wild animal in it somewhere. This is officially pants-shitting terrifying, and I’m going in anyway. Just putting that out there, ladies. Deep breaths…here goes!” Turbid violet-grey swallowed the mauve light of dawn in his camera display.

Inside the cloud was a world seemingly outside of space and time, frigid and bare but for a disembodied car roof here, a sign there, and notably devoid of any life whatsoever, even for this early hour. He shuffled forward, struggling not to lose sight of the frost-glazed pavement that was his only lifeline to a normal world, with its sleepy people and chirping birds and girls in spandex sipping complicated coffee-blends whose names nobody native to the country could pronounce. Shortly he came upon an accent tree planted at the curbside, a 4- or 5-meter specimen of ginkgo. Or at least what remained of it. Ebisu sat hard on his butt, staring up at the inexplicable. The tree appeared to have frozen solid in the midst of imploding.

“I-…I-I-I’m gonna be honest,” Ebisu stammered, still tremulously filming, “I was only joking about dying before now, but this… this is telling me I better get my ass outta here if I ever wanna see daylight again…” he started to climb to his feet, but a shadow appeared in the corner of his eye and he froze. A throaty, crackling sigh pierced the unearthly silence of the cloud-bound world. Haltingly, the cameraman turned toward the source of the noise, and mouthed“…Oh…fuck…”

Pale felid eyes, rolled partway back in their sockets and smoldering with an ethereal violet glow, peered sightless between the shaggy fringe of a lean young man of perhaps 17 or 18. Wisps of steam seeped constantly from between his cracked blue lips. Frozen blood encrusted his nose, chin, and the lapels of his white button-down Namimori High dress shirt. His ashen skin prickled all over with frost. In the time that he’d been standing there, a sheet of ice had flowered beneath his raw, bloody feet, and the crystals had started to finger their way up his legs like a strangling vine. More of the smoky clouds oozed from an angry-looking scar at the base of his neck on the left side, seething with puce embers arranged in what might’ve been a kanji character. Ebisu couldn’t make it out for the frost-laced disheveled hair rustling over top of it, and he didn’t care to try.

“…E-easy, dude….I don’t want any trouble…” he stammered.

“…h…hh…” Another creaking, voiceless moan escaped the stooped figure’s split, bruise-colored lips, along with a cascade of fog.

“I-I’m just gonna get up and…”

“Mu…kuro…” The cloud-belching apparition whispered menacingly.

“…Skeleton—?” (*T/N: “Mukuro” literally means “skeleton” or “dead body”)

“…ghh…!” The frost-bitten boy’s body lurched toward the cameraman, shattering his icy boots. Every movement jolted his entire body, as if he were stop-motion animated, with the recoil of breaking ice. Yet he closed the distance between them inhumanly fast.

“UWAAAAAHH—!” Too late the mere mortal realized he’d have been better off running rather than reasoning. The zombie-like schoolboy snagged him by the collar of his jacket. The whimpering captive frantically fumbled with the zipper as his jacket shriveled and frost flowers bloomed where the icy specter touched, but his attacker already had the other lapel. He yanked Ebisu to within centimeters of his luminous, glassy eyes and sighed bitterly cold billows of clouds into his face. “Mommy…!”

“…nngh…” after a moment seemingly struggling to focus until rusty tears crystallized on his lower lashes, the ghostly boy uttered a slight growl of apparent disappointment and dropped the poor cameraman on his knees. He again twisted his ankles free of their frozen fixtures and lethargically staggered off in the direction he was originally heading, rapidly evaporating into his own hazy gloom.

The clouds released the student cameraman into the streets wracking with residual adrenaline, frost on his jacket and urine staining his groin, but otherwise unharmed.

 

“ACK!” A certain pompadour-sporting, grass-chewing prefect saw his first leg into the school building go flying out from under him. With his other leg still outside the door, the only way to spare his loins was to sacrifice a knee. The prefect immediately ahead of him was merciless.

“Ha! Wipeout!”

“My knee…d’oh my knee…my poor knee…!” Kusakabe gripped his possibly cracked patella.

“You know you’re the third person to bust their ass this morning. There’s slush all down the main corridor.”

“Just don’t tell President when he returns.”

“…If he returns,” the other prefect’s tone turned deadly serious.

“No, WHEN!” the VP of the disciplinary committee roared at his underling. “We don’t know why the others are missing, but whatever it is, Kyou-san would never let himself fall prey to it. Not EVER. And don’t you forget that.”

“Y-yes sir, sorry, sir.”

“…Has anybody bothered to check where this water leads?”

“Uh, no… It did snow a little last night. We all figured someone came back late to get something and tracked a bunch of snow in.”

Kusakabe scanned the length of the corridor tessellated with forest-green rubber tiles. Hither and thither prefects with mops toiled away from the front door to the stairwell at the other end. “This much water? They’d have had to shovel the whole schoolyard's worth in here!”

“Well then it’s probably a prank. Or maybe a protest because we haven’t been able to do anything about the disappearances. Even we can’t keep watch 24/7.”

“…I don’t buy it. You just…go do whatever you needed to do. I’m gonna follow the trail.”

The puddles led the intrepid vice-chairman of the disciplinary committee to the central stairwell, up to the second floor, a short distance to the right, and appeared to continue to and under the rec. room door. Kusakabe felt butterflies welling up in his esophagus and cold sweat dampening his hands. The rec. room had tiny windows in the doors, but condensation on the other side made them nigh on unusable. Plus, his elaborate coiffure made it rather impossible to press his nose to the glass for a better look. Aware enough of Hibari’s supernal past battles, the scene up to this point unsettled Kusakabe enough to load one of his fists with his keys.

He knocked, “Chairman? Have you returned? Is this water leftover from a battle?”

Not a peep came from the other side.

“I’m coming in!” Tentatively he opened the door. Immediately his eyes alighted on the continuation of the trail of water around the twin threadbare sofas, and against the white linoleum in the rec room, he noticed some of the puddles looked a rather…orange. But that mystery resolved itself in the worst possible way when he glimpsed the end of the water trail. A pair of legs in sodden school slacks jutted out from behind Hibari’s desk. At the end of those legs, a pair of bare feet with soles covered in cracks and blisters leeched drying blood into the pool of water. Kusakabe vaulted the couch and rushed behind the desk.

There lay his precious President, thoroughly drenched, face and extremities chapped, blue-tinged from cold, and barely breathing.

“Kyou-san! Wake up! KYOU-SAN!" Kusakabe tried shaking him awake, but realized after a few moment's contact with his boss's frigid body that he wouldn't be waking up without at least an EMT's intervention. "Medic! SOMEBODY CALL A MEDIC!”

 

“…Mnnh……huh…?” Hibari mumbled, blinking hard against his burning eyes. Now that he thought of it, pretty much everything stung. But at least wherever he laid was reasonably soft. And warm; exquisitely cozy. He snuggled deeper into his heated nest. Sleep nearly claimed him again, but a glimpse of blonde hair struck him as a little too incongruous, even in his foggy brain. He squinted. “…Dino…?”

“Do you remember where you are?”

“…I see an IV… Hospital…?” Hibari whispered, glancing around. “Why are you here?”

“Reborn called to tell me they found you at school dying of hypothermia. I take it you don’t remember waking up the first time?”

“…Guess not…”

“I pity your mother right now. She gave you the benefit of the doubt for 2 days. Then she filed a missing persons report for you the day before yesterday. Today she got a call from your VP telling her he found you but you had to be rushed here because you nearly froze to death. She stood by while they zapped you with the defibrillator because getting that cold destabilizes your heart rhythm. She didn’t even get to call off the missing persons search until she made sure she was the first person you saw when you woke up,” Dino chided softly but sternly, “…And you don’t remember.”

“…You can’t honestly blame me…if my brain doesn’t work right that close to death.”

“You’re right,” Dino folded his arms looking unimpressed. “I blame you for putting yourself in that situation to begin with.”

“…I owed it to myself…to try everything before giving up.” Hibari averted his eyes and continued bitterly, “If I was going to fail…I wanted to die trying…before I lost my resolve… …Tch…Mukuro wouldn’t even allow me that…”

“Kyouya. Look me in the eyes for a sec.” The young Mafioso pointed at the bruise-colored patches under his flaring amber eyes. “You see the dark circles under them? The redness? That’s not from work. And your mother’s are ten times worse than mine.”

Hibari visibly seethed. “…Do I not have the right to get rid of a threat to my own health…if it might hurt other people’s feelings?”

“No, I— _merda_. You're right to be pissed at Mukuro, and to confront him when he comes to you. What you don’t get to do is throw yourself, alone, into harm’s way to get results faster. You’ll destroy yourself and you’ll destroy everyone who cares about you, emotionally and physically! Stop thinking the world consists of no one but you and Mukuro!”

“You wanted me to just sit there…stressing myself sick…waiting for him to come and settle the score on HIS terms? Fuck you!” Hibari rolled over in a huff. “For the record…I did not make him do anything he wouldn’t have done on his own eventually… I just made him get it over with before I went crazy.”

“ **You were supposed to ask for help!** ” Dino threw up his hands. “You were supposed to come to me! So we could work out how to fight him and set you free together! We do this all the time in the mob world. If you want something done and your hands are tied, you partner up with someone who’s free to move where you can’t.”

“…Outsourcing your problems? Good way to get stabbed in the back.” Hibari folded his arms, or did so as nearly as he could with an IV in one of them. “How cowardly. At best it’s being coddled…” His eyes narrowed, “Why do you wanna coddle me so much anyway? First you wanna be my mentor…now my attack dog? It’s emasculating and it’s not the ‘you’ that I used to seek out, so stop it.”

Casting a sidelong glance over his shoulder, Dino stood up and backhanded his pupil across the face. Hibari’s mouth hung open, stunned. His vast repertoire of punches, kicks, and other blows only nominally contained the bitch slap, and it was very nearly the last type of strike he ever expected to be used on him. He had some vague notion of its meaning, but…this coming from Dino? Directed at him? Clearly something was lost in translation, but each possibility left him more confused and disconcerted than the last.

Fortunately Dino didn’t leave him hanging for long. “You really think you’re an island, don’t you?” He waved his hands scathingly, “You think you just popped into being, grown, educated, and ready to take on anything? No bonds, no relationships…you owe the world nothing, but the world is just supposed to accept your decisions without question?” He started pacing up and down his reluctant pupil’s bedside. “You rarely listen… When you do, you refuse to acknowledge it… You’re willfully ignorant of others’ needs and efforts, and trample them underfoot… You don’t even give your due diligence to your own family! _VAFANCULO*!_ The sight of you right now is so infuriating I could just break your stupid, stupid head!” He grabbed his former student by the chin. His eyes darkened and his voice grew husky. “…You know, I can be cruel and selfish, too… I could ruin that pretty face. And then Mukuro wouldn’t want you anymore… I’d have you all to myself… It’d be so easy…and it wouldn’t change your worth to me at all…” (*Vafanculo = "fuck you" or "go fuck an ass")

Hibari could feel a cold sweat brimming beneath the eerily tender caresses of Dino’s thumb. The rest of his body greedily soaked up the heat from the electric blankets and heating packs, but his eyes simmered, and not because they’d been scratched by frost. He had to cut it short. The next time Dino’s thumb got within reach, he locked his teeth on it.

“GYAH!” Dino yelped and stuck the bitten digit in his mouth as soon as his student let go.

Hibari spat, “…if you’re gonna be like Mukuro, get the fuck out—”

“Wait, I—!”

“Out!” Hibari brandished his tonfa, barbs sprung. Though the boy bristled and his eyes bulged with feral rage, the blonde detected traces of hurt between the cracks in his voice, and realized to his horror that his words cut much deeper than intended.

“GODDAMMIT, that’s not what I—I mean—…” Hibari pointed vigorously at the door. Dino retreated to the other side of the room and wrung his hands. “… _Cazzo_ …  _Merda_ , this is the exact opposite of what I wanted…! Thank you so much for snapping me out of—”

“I’m still pointing and you’re still not leaving.” Despite the boss’s best efforts to placate him, Hibari sounded more guarded than ever. Dino panicked.

“ **I can’t afford to!** I already messed up in so many ways!” He sat back down and buried his face in his hands. Hibari finally dropped his pointing arm, mystified. “Listen, Kyouya… I’ve failed you. I’d hoped I could hold off until you came of age, and…maybe you’d realize it yourself by then, but I’m afraid…if I don’t do this now, you might not live until the time would be right, so…”

Hibari felt Dino’s large hands on his shoulders, and saw his face rapidly approaching his own. But his body was still too sluggish to react. The young don’s supple lips met his chapped and scabby mouth, and a world of understanding he wasn’t sure he wanted poured into him. He started to mouth questions when they separated, but no sound came out. He could only slump back into the pillow and gape at the ceiling as his insides worked themselves into defensive knots.

“…Do you get it now? I’m not trying to treat you like a woman, but…I love you like a man should love a woman, and…It’s no reflection on your competence, but…seeing you disregard yourself and others like this just…” Dino began to weep. “It’s agonizing! You called out to me that one time and now it’s like every time I reach out to you, you kick me in the ribs!”

Hibari listened to his mentor sob in silence for several minutes before remarking under his breath, “Getting all high and mighty again… At least something’s back to normal.”

“I’m not trying to…I…I just don’t know how to do right by you anymore,” Dino sniffled. “I’m so sorry for slapping you like that…and saying all that creepy stuff just to get your attention… I messed up. Everything’s so messed up… I just want you to live…! Please… Just live…”

“……You know…not asking for help…wasn’t just out of pride,” Hibari started, almost sympathetic now.

“…Sorry?” Dino’s composure gradually seemed to be returning.

“Mukuro… Lately I’ve realized…he has **never** honestly gone all out…against anyone… He’s only ever lost because he fucked up trying to protect his body.” Hibari visibly shuddered, “Fucked up idea of love or not…like you said, he clearly wants me alive. Anyone else who tries to kill him? Not so much.”

“Tell me you’re not already planning another attempt,” Dino pleaded, half-rhetorically.

Ten years of the prefect's life and any trace of vigor he'd recovered in his few minutes of wakefulness seemed to rush from his body in a single heavy sigh. “…I can never accept him, but…” Hibari wilted back into his pillow and let his weary eyes slip out of focus, “I’m done fighting him… I’m spent…” At last sealed his resignation with his eyelids.

It occurred to Dino then how dark and sunken his eyes looked, like he’d been sleepless longer than even his mother. He glanced at the patient’s exposed arm and wondered with a twinge in his chest if it had not grown thinner.

Of course it had. The poor kid just staggered from violent rape to the ravages of illness and then right back into the clutches of his rapist as soon as he recovered. The blonde bit his upper lip. His amber eyes darted, as if in frantic search of a solution.

“…How about this. When you check out of here, why don’t we skip town for a few days? Just to get you out of Mukuro’s reach?”

The student half-opened one eye and murmured, “I’m fairly certain he can torment me from anywhere in the world.”

“Well, you haven’t been out of the city since this all started. You never know until you try.”

“You’re asking me to run away,” Hibari stated with all the enthusiasm of a man asked to castrate himself with a rusty spoon.

“…We gotta do something, Kyouya, you look terrible. Have you seen yourself? Even with your color back you’re a mess of bandages and scabs. Nobody has any idea how you managed not to get anything worse than superficial frostbite.”

Recalling the kiss, the younger of the two looked more than a little wary. “…I’ll think about it… Did they say anything about when I’ll be released?”

“They’re keeping you overnight for observation. You can check out tomorrow around noon, but you’ll need to pick up a couple prescriptions on the way out. At least enough to last you until I can get you to see my Sun guardian. And a wheelchair.”

“Wheelchair? Wha—why?”

“Doctor’s orders. You don’t wanna see your feet. The soles are pretty much gone. And you have to be really careful not to rub your eyes. You got some ice crystals in them and they scratched your corneas.”

“Shit…what the hell happened to me?”

“Wouldn’t we like to know? What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Clearly? Mukuro stabbing me in the back after I shanked an illusion of him… After that, he got really pissed off and carried me up to the roof of his place, but…it’s pretty foggy…” He lowered his voice as if talking more to himself now. “I remember the Moon…”

“Hold it, hold it…the Moon? As in this was still night?”

“Uh, yeah.”

“ _Cazzo_ , your limbs should be frozen black!”

“I don’t get it either… I just remember that…a little snow…and a fence…and…I think I might’ve called out for my dad…”

“Your dad?”

“Yeah…weird, isn’t it. You’d think most people would cry for their mums when they’re dying, but…I called for my dad.” Hibari chuckled grimly through his nose. “…Just now realized how much I resented my old man for letting work ship him off to Singapore… And mom for being well-off but not stepping up ‘til dad could find a local job… Hell, maybe I’m the only one who had a problem with the arrangement.”

“Absentee fathers suck, right?”

“Eh…I don’t care so much now, but…it’s probably why I turned out the way I am… Ne, what time is it?”

“Lessee…" Dino shook his Rolex out from under his sleeve, "17:35. Visiting hours end at 18:00.”

“…I’ll go with you tomorrow, but I don’t wanna owe your goons.”

“You’d rather wait however many weeks it takes it all to blister and heal over?”

“No,” Hibari rolled his eyes, “I’d just rather owe somebody I know I’ll pay back quickly.”

“The hyperactive boxer kid?”

“Yeah.”

“You trust him with this job?”

“Did we not go over this last year?”

“I dunno, I was really out of it after Grenadier got me.”

“Well, he can heal bone and skin at least. The rest is up to endurance.”

“Can you write down his address?”

“I’ll just tell you tomorrow.”

“Fair enough.”

“…One more thing,” Hibari visibly squirmed.

“…What’s that?”

“Just to be clear…" Hibari gingerly rolled onto his side and dragged himself as close to Dino as the bed rails would allow, lowering his voice and narrowing his eyes. "Touch me like that again…and I’ll bite you to death.”

Dino’s heart sank. He asked glumly, “Is…that your answer to my feelings after all?”

“…No…” Hibari shimmied back to the center of the nest of heated blankets and tubes, stealing a couple more sidelong glances before turning completely away. But Dino could still see his neck and earlobes turning a reassuringly healthy scarlet. The prefect continued, seemingly muttering at the window, “…Rather…I dunno right now …Too many people touching me lately…disgusting…” 

“I’ll just keep my hands occupied holding onto that chance, then.”

“…Right…”

A young nurse fresh out of med school knocked twice and poked her head in, “Hibari-kun, there is a Detective Chiba here to talk to you.”

“What, police?”

“I suppose it’s best to take my leave, then,” Dino stood and donned his jacket. “Take care. I’ll pick you up tomorrow.”

“Un,” Hibari nodded soberly and turned his back on the scruffy, flat-faced man in uniform who stepped in the moment Dino stepped out.

“Who was that foreigner that just walked out?” the detective queried somewhat more acrimoniously than he intended.

“Don’t think I’m obligated to answer that,” Hibari dismissed.

“We’ll get back to that if needed,” sighed the agent. “Where were you the last 3 nights?”

With an eyebrow cocked in slight amusement tempered by irritation, the patient took a moment to size up his interrogator, found him wanting, and let his expression relax into disdain. “…You’re not local, are you?”

“I’m a recent transfer but I’ve heard the rumors about you and your family. So, your answer?”

“Tch… Clearly not enough to know better,” the truculent teen muttered.

“Hey, I’m not one to rock the boat, but Namimori High’s missing 28 students now, and you’re the only one who’s disappeared and come back. You’re our only lead—”

“—and your only suspect, yes? For all you know…I injured myself on purpose to conceal my involvement.”

“…Regretfully, yes.”

“Great. You can stop feigning civility now, thanks.” Hibari rolled over and flashed him a sneer, “Your good cop routine needs work. Badly.”

“You know what, brat? I don't know how it is that you’ve never been arrested, but your rap sheet goes from here to the mainland*. I’m not part of the chain of command that let that happen, got it?” Chiba leaned over the bed. “Your parents’ dime won’t stop me from putting you under a microscope if you don’t start cooperating.” (*China)

“Lemme just, erm…” Hibari uncovered his arms and produced a pair of handcuffs. Chiba blinked, slapped his waistband, and seethed.

“When did you—?!”

“Relax, I’ll talk,” Hibari stopped the detective with his foot while toying with the cuffs, “but not before I clear up a few things. First…” he took a cuff in each hand and with a terse grunt, he snapped the chain connecting them. “Second, I’m a wild animal. You work for people who’ve called me that to my face… Expect a wild animal to respect your arbitrary laws and you’re gonna get mauled. Give me my space…and I’ll make your life easy. Questions?”

“How do you think you’re gonna pay for those handcuffs?”

“I left you a present before I left last Sunday, in case I came back in a body bag. Ever heard of the ‘40 Thieves’ gang?”

“…No.”

“Ask your superiors. Anyway, they were unfinished business that is now…finished.”

Chiba reissued his original inquiry through gritted teeth, “Where. Were you. The last 3 nights?”

“Kokuyou Healthy Land, or what’s left of it.”

“Witnesses that can corroborate your story?”

“Ask the Kokuyou gang. Then try to flee with your life.”

“What were you doing there?”

“Investigating the disappearances with the only person who knows the culprit personally.”

“ **You’ve been sitting on the culprit’s identity?!** ” Chiba roared and bore down on the bed rails.

“No point sharing it," the suspect rolled his head away from the sound and fury the cop was trying to heap upon him. "I dunno what he looks like, I doubt he’s using the name I know, nobody would believe what I’ve seen him do so far, and the only person who knows the full extent of his abilities is…” Hibari faltered. His breathing rate increased.

“…That person is? …What’s wrong with you?”

The prefect’s eyes glazed over, and he mumbled, “……in the end, I…basically…sold my body…to a sadistic serial killer…for information…and a chance to kill him…and this is all I have to show for it…” He laughed briefly through his nose, but quickly turned disconsolate and buried himself in the hospital linens. “…The climate-controlled storage facility off of Morishita Blvd…4th and 5th floors,” he murmured, “One of the Kokuyou gang escaped from there. Wasn’t much left by the time we to check it out, but…we didn’t have forensic equipment. That’s all I have.”

“Wh—?”

“Go. I’m done.”

“Well I’m not. I’m gonna need—!”

Hibari flung off the covers and bored holes through Detective Chiba with his feral glare. “You owe me," He stabbed the air in Officer Chiba's direction with his index finger, hissing, "I’m in here because that little scrap of info cost me 3 nights of torture and a near-death experience. Take it or leave it.”

Their ensuing staring contest lasted about 6 seconds, and then the same nurse that let Chiba in to begin with sheepishly entered with a server’s cart featuring a cheap rendition of Hamburg steak, pickled turnip, and steamed rice. “Um…dinner?”

“This isn’t over,” the detective threatened, swiftly gathering up the pieces of his broken handcuffs. He stormed past the nurse without so much as an “excuse me.”

Hibari sighed, “Thank you.”


	14. Gaslighting

Yamamoto lightly caressed the stinging maple-leaf shape warming his right cheek. He’d have appreciated the glow had it come from Gokudera’s hand, but since the blow was self-inflicted, he rather regretted it. Now that he thought of it, the same sorry story could be said for a lot of his activities as of late: so much he wanted but could not ask of Gokudera he ended up doing for himself. Between attacks on his friend-boss, inexplicable rarefaction of his baseball club, and the quartet of towering shadows staking out the four cardinal directions around the city as of this afternoon, the last thing he felt he could afford was to hasten the flight of his best friend into the arms of his nearly alien girlfriend.

And yet he’d practically done just that at the end of school today. Recalling the exchange, he gripped his cuff to resist striking himself again.

Gokudera had called him by epithet as usual while noisily heaving his backpack onto his shoulder. Yamamoto recalled being unable to turn away from the turbid vortex looming on the horizon beyond the south-facing windows, but he must’ve responded somehow since Gokudera continued. He said something about paintball, or whatever, but the part that stuck out was when he asked if he and his girlfriend could stop by the Yamamoto family sushi bar for dinner afterward. With everything else on his mind, the thought of having to feed the creature robbing him of his best friend filled his mouth with an acrid taste. Refusing to turn his head became a matter of sparing his classmates the sight of the frightful bitterness crawling all over his face.

“Today’s not a good day for that,” he repeated under his breath what he’d told Gokudera via his faint reflection in the window. “At our restaurant, I mean.”

“Huh? Why?” Gokudera questioned, leaning closer. Yamamoto struggled harder still to keep his face out of Gokudera’s line of sight. Thank goodness they didn’t share a home room with Tsuna—he’d have figured him out immediately. Most days he merely wished Gokudera could be as entertained by his everyday airheadedness as Yamamoto was by Gokudera’s gullibility. He even entertained a guilty hope that Gokudera inwardly laughed on the inside every time he outwardly scolded Yamamoto for his obliviousness. Today however, he prayed to the ominous pillar in the southerly sky for the wisdom he needed to ward Gokudera off without troubling him.

“It’s, uh…we’re short-staffed tonight. Because of…um…On Matsuri. A few of our staff put in for time off so they could be in the parade. Anyway, service will be slow tonight. You probably wouldn’t have the patience for it.”

“Is that a challenge?” Gokudera sneered, “Don’t underestimate Juudaime’s right-hand man!”

Yamamoto remembered his train of thought derailing into an angry heap _. Why the hell would you take your date to a place you’ve been warned will be slow? Why would you pick now of all times to be confrontational? What part of this is worth fighting over?_

Finally, he turned around to show Gokudera his drawn and harried face. “Don’t add to my stress. Please… Normally I’d laugh but today it’s not funny.”

“…Hasn’t been funny for awhile, now, has it?” Gokudera stared daggers directly into the pinch-hitter's eyes. “Bout time you turned around.”

So many things Yamamoto wanted to pour from his mouth, yet “…Huh?” was all that made it through his vocal chords.

“It’s not like I particularly care, but you know, the silence is deafening when an airhead like you stops laughing.” Gokudera’s gaze softened and Yamamoto recalled nearly reaching for his chest to keep his heart inside. That face. That turmoil of rebuke and penitence and sympathy and omni-directional frustration… It was the same as the first time they met each other’s eyes after their disastrous fight with Gamma, the moment when Yamamoto figured out exactly why the causative dispute hurt so much more than usual. His mouth flapped uselessly, the apologies and pleas to be heard without judgement mangled so thoroughly in his throat that his larynx would not deign to give them sound. Gokudera stepped away, evidently disappointed. “I’ll let you off tonight because you look like shit, but think about that next time you wanna hide something from me. Don’t think you’re the only one wound up and worn out from having to look over their shoulders all the time.”

As soon as the rest of the class had given up on him and left, that’s when he’d slapped himself.

_Stupid, stupid, STUPID— **GYAH**!_

He clapped his face between both hands this time.

_OWOw ow ow…ow… ow. Shouldn’t have done that. Should NOT have done that._

_Shouldn’t have done that, shouldn’t have warned Gokudera off, shouldn’t have shouldn’t have talked to him today, shouldn’t have anything more shouldn’t have to do with him shouldn’t have_

_Yeah…_

_Now that he’s got her, I…should I still have anything to do shouldn’t have anything more to do with him shouldn’t have with him?_

_At all?_

_No, I shouldn’t have No I should just be able to put on a normal face  act normal why can’t I just suck it up and act normal?_

_I should just go back to we should just go back  to being buddies just see less of each other when girls enter the picture everybody does that_

_But I’ll get in the way I’ll wanna get in the way I wanna I wonder if just this much is enough to get me kicked to death by a horse_

_Haven’t seen horses around here in years but I bet Shittopi-chan would ride them backwards or something well then I’d probably laugh and Gokudera would smile at me again before getting pissy at me_

The tempestuous horizons matched his state of mind as he parted the brilliant cobalt and white Noren curtains adorning the entrance to the family restaurant—where he was greeted by a wok to the back of the skull.

Outre bursts of lights and colors fogged his eyes and the metallic clash of seasoned cast-iron against bone echoed raucously in his cochlea as he tumbled to the floor. Gradually, two figures circling like vultures, bellowing what sounded like orders to each other and to Yamamoto, gradually materialized from the dazzling flashes. At the same time, he felt furious tugging and pressure on his limbs, as if he were being bound. The first assailant’s face to rearrange itself into something sensible pricked the young baseballer with an icy stab of muddled panic.

_Dad?!_

_What are you—?!_

Then captive high-schooler saw the other face, and the turning of the Earth seemed to slam on breaks, grinding to a halt at the exact moment his eyes met the other figure’s…buttons.

Mother. Fucking. Buttons. The same tea-stain hue as his own eyes, which, judging by the rest of the knit-skinned face, they were clearly designed to educe.

Yamamoto tried to howl in protest, but one of his captors had stuffed a cloth napkin into his mouth while he was disoriented. His father and his doppelganger scooped up his struggling form, each pinning an arm to their bodies, and marched him into the kitchen. The younger Yamamoto could only writhe and snap his head every which way while the elder urged the 3 early customers to depart and call the police, reassuring them that for this incident their meals were on the house.

In the kitchen, father cast son roughly against the refrigerator and palmed a hefty _yanagiba_ to silence any objection. The mannequin for his part confiscated Takeshi’s bat-bag, felt the weight in his hands, and took a one-handed swing at the youth for good measure. His father hissed at the heavy thud, almost as loudly as Takeshi himself hissed at what he was pretty sure was a new dent in his cheekbone.

“Whoa, OK, easy there, Takeshi. We still need it to talk…assuming this…bundle of rags can talk.” The elder Yamamoto wrinkled his nose at the unnerving sight.

The real doll’s cheek rumpled but he dropped the equipment obediently. “Sorry.”

Yamamoto sat paralyzed in body, with mind racing at the speed of the Shinkansen.

_Stay calm stay calm you’re not even tied up yet just gotta get to gotta go get my shinai shit where did I at the back door right I think in the umbrella bin by the back door_

Most of the life-and-death situations Takeshi had faced up to this point were manageable if he just pretended in the moment that it was all a game. Hell, for the longest time, he thought it really was a game, which kind of embarrassed him now, but he could laugh about it. Like everything else, he’d have time afterward to contemplate his mortality while laughing over a milkshake and maybe a drag of Gokudera’s secondhand smoke.

His dad didn’t play games, though. Well, technically he did, with a ball or while entertaining his customers at the sushi bar. But when he had a blade in his hands and a person at the other end, playtime was over.

_Think think think think think dad won’t kill you off the bat like_

_Wait he doesn’t think I’m human he might_

_No no no no no_

_Calm calm calm stay calm gotta aim for the doll make it act out make not act like me_

His father pulled the napkin gag from his mouth. The last strand of saliva connecting Takeshi’s tongue to the gag had not yet broken before he launched into his appeal. “Dad, I know this sounds weird and I didn’t get a chance to tell you—,”

“You’ve already lost,” the doll interrupted, although Takeshi could somehow see in the the way the cloth bunched around the eyes and nose that he was holding back a lot of choice words that might otherwise tip off the father. “Now tell us who sent you and where to find him.”

The real Yamamoto bristled at the flagrant framing attempt, “You’d know better than I would! Dad, he’s the doll—!”

“Dad, don’t listen—!”

“This is an illusion, I’m the real Takeshi—!”

“They’re all trained to say that!”

“ **Quiet, both of you!** ” Yamamoto-san smacked the fridge with an open hand. “…My son’s having a shouting match with a talking rag doll, what’s this world coming to?”

“…If he’s not going to talk, we should probably just do like we discussed and cut his head off.”

The suggestion turned Takeshi’s blood to slush, though it hardly etched a mark on his face.

_This guy’s cold smooth AF if he’s a damned soul must’ve been a serial killer or war criminal or_

“I would much rather be able to give it to the police alive, otherwise they’re going to think we’re crazy and we’ll never get any answers. They might even fine the patrons for a making a frivolous call.”

“Every moment his head’s still attached is another moment that he could bite one of us and complete his mission.”

 _Yep. War criminal,_ Takeshi mused with a shudder, _or really nasty politician._

But it gave him an idea. Or the precursor to one, anyway.

“Their names.”

“…What?”

“You said ‘they’re all trained to say that.’ Who’s ‘they’?”

“How would I know the names of some poor souls trapped in rag dolls?” The doll flashed him a superior, disgusted look that Takeshi didn’t even think he could make. Which would be great.

_Yes, please, make more of those faces when dad’s looking so he gets as creeped-out as I am._

“Not them, who were they impersonating?”

“…Oh no, I see how this is… You want me to give you names to take back to your master.”

 _Crap_.

“Heh, nailed it,” the doll pointed at Takeshi and glanced haughtily at his father, “Look at his face.” The doppelganger’s subsequent chuckle oozed something the original wouldn’t have quite been able to describe except maybe to say that it prickled his spine and made his asshole clench.

_I don’t laugh like that do I? …ugh, I hope not._

“Honestly, yours is not a damn sight better right now,” the elder Yamamoto evidently felt the same thing just then, turned to look at his supposed son’s face, and found it…wanting.

_Ooh…ooh, did I just foul him up? Let’s take another swing…_

“OK, we sort this out another way. Let’s see, uh…uh…how about this? How many people were impersonated at school this week? Not counting me, or you, whichever.”

“Let’s see, one, two, three…gimme a sec.”

“Why? You’re already over.”

“Say what?”

“I don’t know how many dolls your boss sent out in total but only two have been to Namimori High so far.” The younger Yamamoto felt a surge of hope and pride when it became clear by his father’s expression that the old chef was now decidedly in no-man’s land between them. A little more and he’d be back in his dad’s good graces.

_Got him!_

The doll smirked with a slight “You, you must’ve, uh, taken your dear sweet time getting to me if you only know of that many.”

_Aw damn nice save _

_Guess that’s not privileged intel Think think think security questions names Namimori Kokuyou Chrome Mukuro Fran_

_Wait , I wonder…sorry in advance…_

“OK, then…who besides Tsuna and Hibari was attacked at Namimori?”

“I told you, I’m not giving more names to your boss.”

“Then I’ll name names. Mukuro, Chrome, Chikusa, Ken, Fran, any of those ring a bell?”

“So you know about the other attacks." The impostor threw up his hands impatiently, "What does that prove?”

Takeshi couldn't help but crack a little smile. “Well, since only one of them goes to Namimori and she was safe as of an hour ago…you tell me.”

_Home run._

“Oh, uh, we were still restricted to Namimori?”

_Dammit, stop that!_

_Shit now what do I do say crap crap crap I’m out of ideas dad help me out here_

“ **Oh for the love of** … That’s it, I know what will settle this,” Yamamoto-san snarled, backing over to the back door, grabbing his son's heirloom shinai from the umbrella stand, and returning in striking position. He glared daggers into his real son’s eyes, seeing only glassy agate beads wedged inside twinned half-pockets of fabric stitched together at the corners. “Line up in front of the wash basins, both of you. March.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yessir.”

“Now, then. Listen closely because I’ll only ask once. If you get it wrong…whichever one of you dared to pit me against my only child will lose their head right here. If you fear any god, start washing your neck now or forever hold your peace…" Neither Takeshi nor his doppelganger moved, though the former did swallow hard. "No? Very well.” He exhaled heavily through his nose and demanded gravely, “Where’s your mother?”

“Trick question, she’s gone. I’m over it,” the doppelganger replied confidently, almost as if offended at the question.

The original answered more modestly, “Shoho memorial gardens, off 48th and Nishiura-dori. Fourth row north of the southeast side. The incense burner has a pair of koi on it.”

Evidently it jarred Yamamoto-san even more than he braced himself for to watch the correct answer flutter effortlessly from a mouth full of flooring nails. His swing, at the one who to his eyes most resembled his son, faltered just enough for the fake to take the brunt of it in the forearm. Both Takeshis, flesh and fabric, saw their right arms split down the middle.

“IGYAAAHHH!” the original Takeshi shrieked, tears of agony mercifully blurring the sight of his limb spontaneously cleaving itself between the radius and the ulna all the way up to the elbow. He doubled over cradling the gory, splintered mess of a limb.

The doll meanwhile either didn’t feel pain, or it was an expert at ignoring it—it ensnared the transformed sword in the tatters of burlap and batting, caught the reeling younger Yamamoto under the chin with its wooden sandal, and swung over the son’s crumpling body around behind the father to get him in a headlock against the back of his own blade.

The kick had snapped Takeshi’s head back, as most blows to the jawline are designed to do. As it turns out the jaw has an panic button built into it, a fire-everything switch that, with a stiff whack, sees the brain stun itself and power down until it stops ricocheting off the insides of the skull. To a human that looks like black, choking smoke rushing in from all sides and comes with a curious weighty lightness of being, as if the body were clothes suddenly drenched and sagging off the soul until their weight finally pulled it down. As Takeshi succumbed to the concussion, in the last flickers of his mind’s twilight, he was pretty sure he felt the creeping course of hot liquid slither from his chin down his neck to pool in the soft spot behind his collarbone. And though muffled by the sounds of struggle, he thought he heard his own voice utter something like “You’ll do.”

_Or was it you’ll spew?_

_No pretty sure  it was you’ll do—wait_

_Do what?_

Takeshi’s twice-battered brain rebooted after only a few seconds, but that was enough.

“Oh, son, thank goodness you’re awake!” Yamamoto-san panted, leaning over him, one hand outstretched and the other somewhat tucked away. “Are you OK?”

Takeshi gingerly touched the gash on his chin, then glanced down at his arm, still blinking stars from his eyes. “Head hurts… Oh, my arm’s back. Now what—!” His eyes staggered from his limb to the floor next to him. He failed to conceal a short, sharp gasp. The doll lay splayed lifelessly on the ground.

The head was still attached.

An electric chill spidered down his back and discharged his subconsciously primed leg muscles. Without a moment to spare, he launched himself nearly a meter backwards into the aluminium door of the dishwasher. In the place he’d been so recently seated, Yamamoto-san could now be seen pulling the yanagiba out of the lacquered floor. Behind his ear Takeshi could now see blood and flesh torn by chewing from the back of his neck.

The soul in the doll had nearly won. A single well-placed strike to the now defenseless heap of rags, and Takeshi’s father would die. Yet he would also die if Takeshi killed his would-be murderer.

“NOOO!” Takeshi dove for the doll and snatched it out of malignant soul’s striking range, palming his pendant in the other hand. “Jirou! Kojirou! Come on out!” He donned his armor and drew his short swords, barking orders to his canine familiar. “Jirou, trade me!”

“Rarf!” Jirou clamped the three short swords from its harness in its mouth and spat them at Takeshi while he tossed the doll containing his father onto Jirou’s back. But Jirou had only the time to turn around before several knives struck it and the doll it carried in the flank. “YIPE!”

Yamamoto-san’s body pumped its fist. “Fuck yeah! Still got it.”

“J-Jirou, return!” the youth called his whimpering familiar back into his pendant to recuperate, and raced to put his body between his father’s body and the one-armed, knife-pierced vessel containing his father's soul. “That won’t happen again,” he glowered at the rogue apparition facing the business end of his long katana.

“Not like that, maybe,” the corners of his father’s mouth climbed nearly to the ears and the eyes bulged with feral thrill. “But it will happen again, and again, until that doll is in shreds because I'll be  _fucked_  if I'm going back to that mountain of needles!”

“Who are you?” Takeshi demanded unflinchingly.

“Well, I was just some no-name grunt who made his living chatting up and mowing down rag-heads 'til they court-martialed me. Pogues who came after me kept bitching about me making their job harder. And I'm just like 'no shit, you didn't let me finish 'em!'" One stolen hand strayed to his apron pocket, and the other grabbed a bottle of shochu from the kitchen's central island, which he uncorked with Yamamoto-san's mouth. "Used to like to think I was like this Knight Templar ya know? Only I wasn't all that surprised to find nobody better than me waiting on the other side. So I guess I just enjoyed the license to kill," he shrugged and took a huge swig of the booze. "Egh, weak shit. Anyway, shit happened, now I’m your dad. And you can either make peace with that,” he pulled his right hand from his apron pocket with a knife between every knuckle, “or I can hack you up along with that overgrown potato sack, one little sliver at a time.”

“If you’re not a swordsman,” Takeshi admonished, “you’re in over your head,”

Yamamoto-san's body snorted and stepped forward. “Take those swords away and what have you got?”

“You can’t take my swords because they come when I call.”

“Let me rephrase that. What do you—who knows one weapon and can’t even fully utilize it if you ever wanna see daddy-dearest again—have on me, who is trained to use anything I can touch as an improvised weapon?” the specter sneered, approaching another two steps.

“You’ll find out if you try throwing those knives again,” Takeshi stated flatly, standing up straighter. His possessed father’s leering face morphed into a scowl. The eyes drifted off to the right and the right foot turned slightly. “If you try for the back door now I’ll make it there before you do. And back to the doll if you try a feint. Look up.” The soldier stole a quick glance toward the ceiling, but dared not let his eyes linger. He saw what he needed to anyhow: a luminous blue swallow with twin tails of blue flame perched on the hanging pot rack.

“…Fine.” The militant soul released 2 of the 3 knives from his right hand. Not entirely out of his list of expectations, the knives descended leisurely to the lacquer as if sinking through molasses. “Huh…lemme see, what'd the boss man say…was it the essence of rain or cloud that’s supposed to do that?” He mimed deep contemplation whilst casually jamming the last blade, a fillet knife, into the controls for the range and twisting.

“What are you…?” Takeshi didn’t expect that last move, but it took him less than 2 seconds for its rationale to don on him. If the poltergeist couldn’t fight him directly, he’d simply overwhelm him with environmental hazards.

“By the way, if your customers did the right thing, the police oughta be here pretty soon, too. You’re holding me at sword-point guarding a doll that matches the description of the suspicious person they’d probably report. I wonder who’ll they wanna arrest? If I tell them…say, my ungrateful son is attacking me over…some inheritance issue and you try to tell the truth…I wonder who they’ll believe? …Tell me, since I haven’t been around for a few years, are straight-jackets and rooms with cushioned walls still a thing?”

Every possibility the demon rattled off was like an ice cube dropped down the back of Takeshi’s shirt. He could slow the enemy’s movements to almost nothing. He could overwhelm him with his swordsmanship. If he used his short-bladed flame swords right, he could even fly. But the damned soul holding his father’s body hostage was right: unless Tsuna or some of the other guardians showed up, it was him against the world, plus handicaps.

The electric blue fire swaying leisurely on the range jolted and sputtered. Its slow waltz hastened to a more typical jitterbug, nearly matching its tempo to the vibrations creeping up Takeshi’s arms.

"Tell ya what, kid, we don't have to do this," the body-snatcher schmoozed and started rolling the bottle of booze between his commandeered hands. "Hell, I'll even let you keep the doll if you let me go and swear off pursuing me. I just don't wanna go back to hell, is all. We can all relate to that, right? You can find your dad a new body…bag. Maybe." 

Takeshi let one hand off his sword but kept it pointed at his enemy. Ignoring the throbbing in his brain as he strained to maintain eye-contact with the posturing poltergeist, he slowly crouched down to scoop his father's new vessel up onto his shoulder. "Letting you off to kill in my dad's name would be the same as letting you kill him outright."

"Suit yourself," the psychopath grinned and shrugged dramatically—conveniently tipping the bottle of shochu into the roaring range.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also, as of 4/12, edited to make clear that the psycho military ghost's attitude is not typical of troops in general. If anything, he was more like a Blackwater merc. No, I do not regard the soldiers in the middle East as racist psychopaths. The overwhelming majority signed up either out of a sense of duty, or more often, to be able to afford college. The reprehensible politicians who keep sending them to war on false pretenses treat them with about as much respect and care as plastic flatware. Only 3 types of people treat war as anything other than a last resort: those who profit from the military industrial complex, those fully and forever insulated from the risks by their money, and those who enjoy bloodshed. The titular ghost is of the bloodshed-loving ilk.


	15. The Way Is Shut

A few hours earlier in the uptown hospital, Hibari laid curled as if with a good book, with only his stocking feet under the covers. Already he’d donned the freshly laundered pants he arrived in, and a slightly overlarge pullover emblazoned with unfulfilled aspirations of being a blood donor's freebie. He’d told his mother he was leaving with Dino over the phone that morning, and even he felt sort of bad at how curtly and absently he’d said his good byes after worrying her so much. But that perturbed him only a fraction as much as the idea of escaping in the first place—after all, he would have a few minutes to give her a more proper send-off when he stopped by his house to pack a travel bag. He could afford to stew in loathing of the need to retreat, or so he thought then. Surely he’d earned that right with his ongoing humiliation.

But that was a few minutes ago. Now that he was used to the medical sunglasses and could take a better look at the viral video preoccupying his local news app, everything outside the borders of his mobile’s screen ceased to exist. There was only him, transfixed by the hazy but devastatingly familiar recording of a zombie-like Namimori High student the internet had already variously dubbed the Frostbite Boy ( _Toushou no Shounen_ ), Frost Zombie ( _Shimofuri Zonbi_ ), any of several male relations of the Yuki-onna, or most often and most simply, the [Abominable] Snowman, _Yukiotoko_. Most commentators and the newscasters themselves put it down to an elaborate and masterfully-crafted hoax, though they did give the videographer ample credit for coming to the station shivering in his boots and covered in his own urine.

As for the delinquent, though, he could hardly spare a second’s incredulity for whoever it was on the other side of the camera. He’d never of his own free will consent to being filmed staggering like a stop-motion drunk, salivating blood and steam and rolling his eyes like the possessed, yet there beneath the crust of hoarfrost and hemoglobin was the face he saw in the mirror every morning. Except for yesterday. And it so happened the film was dated…yesterday.

_What was I—_

_How the fuck—_

_What’s wrong with my—_

_How did I—_

_What’s that on my—_

_Where was—_

_Who was—_

_Why the—_

_Huh?!_

He barely registered the knock and the door opening, but the “klonk” of bone striking latex-coated metal accompanied by a vivid string of Italian expletives jolted him back to reality.

“Ayayay…I’m too tall for this country,” Dino grumbled, rubbing the imprint of the door frame on his forehead. After staring at a back-lit screen for so long through the roll-up tinted lenses, Hibari couldn’t make out much more of his visitor than a silhouette, but the buttery voice laced with a Mediterranean accent was all the identification he needed.

“…” the soon-to-be-ex-patient glanced over cagily but otherwise failed to respond.

“…Isn’t this when you’d normally say ‘then go home’?” the unassuming don asked after a few seconds of silence.

“…Oy.” Hibari finally motioned him over to look at the phone, with the video paused on Yukiotoko’s alarming rush at the cameraman. “Who does this look like to you?”

“What is…wait…is that…you? …Jesus Christ, what…?”

“Shit…” Hibari dropped his head and hissed to himself. “Read the article…and before you ask, no, I don’t remember any of it.”

“Excuse me?” A nurse tapped the door frame. “Hibari-kun? Your checkout paperwork is ready downstairs and—oh my…” Dino’s dashing figure suddenly locked her gaze in a vice-like grip. She flushed and fanned herself with the clipboard. “Uh…ah…”

“He’s my ride,” Hibari clarified, “though I could probably drive myself now.”

Dino glanced up from the article to chastise him, “ **Oh** , no you don't. Not after you scratched up your eyeballs and stripped the soles off your feet. Speaking of, ma’am, did you happen to bring a wheelchair?”

“Ah, yes, I did, sir!”

“Thank you kindly. I’ll take him up front—” a pair of loud slapping noises cut them off. Hibari padded easily over to his shoes in the corner and put them on without showing the slightest hint of pain.

“…Let’s go.”

Dino pulled the wheelchair around from behind the nurse and steered it seat-first into the backs of Hibari’s knees. The prefect sat hard, and turned to his mentor glaring harder. The blonde don smiled back gently. “Now we can go.” He leaned down and whispered, “Just bear with it until we get to the car. Keep the glasses on, too.”

“I’m not even…” Hibari started, hesitated, glanced at the nurse, and swallowed the rest of his thought. Crossing his arms, he grumbled, “Whatever.”

Check-out took an additional 20 minutes, most of it filling out paperwork and reviewing pamphlets on how to care for frostbite injuries. But just a few meters beyond the front sliding doors, the ex-patient chucked the guidelines into the recycle bin as he passed.

“What are you doing?” Dino stopped and demanded somewhat irritably.

“Didn’t need them. Or Sasagawa. I’m completely healed, so keep moving.”

“Don’t try to fake your way out of—!”

Hibari turned about so fast his sunglasses flew off, he and grabbed his mentor by the collar of the poppy-red polo under his open olive bomber jacket. “Would you rather I’d risked becoming an experiment to show you in front of the nurse?” he snarled. “I’ll prove it in the car, now let’s **go**.”

“OK, Ok…we’re going,” Dino relented with hands in the air. Now that he’d had a good look at his pupil’s eyes, he realized that no, the seemingly bloodless prefect did not walk away from the ordeal of the night before last without further trauma. As expressions went, about the only thing Hibari’s mouth was good for was a haughty smirk; the rest of his emotions he kept in his eyes. Dino had learned at least this much within his first few meetings with the belligerent boy. Reading those eyes took quite a bit more practice, but he could just about do it now. And just now, Hibari’s eyes told him that he was emotionally a Prince Rupert’s Drop, his impervious front on the razor edge of catastrophically shattering. One more tweak in just the wrong spot, just one more little setback or one more affront to his autonomy, and he could have a breakdown. Dino began to question just how much if any emotional durability a few days’ getaway could restore to his student.

“…These I’ll keep,” Hibari mumbled to himself, fetching the plastic lens and then climbing into the silver Maserati Quattroporte. “Oy, Bronco, how long a trip will this be?”

“Six nights counting tonight. It’s an Onsen in Ha—”

“Six pairs of underwear, new shirt, and coat, got it,” Hibari cut him off and laid out his plan as brusquely as possible. “Listen. If I don’t know where we’re going, maybe Mukuro won’t either. Once we get to my place, just wait in the car. I’ll be packed in under 10 minutes. Soon as we leave there, I’m going to sleep.”

“Understood. Romario, you know where we’re going?”

“More or less.” The elder man replied in a coarse baritone that rustled his mustache. “Ivan’s navigating.”

“GPS in hand, boss,” the man with the canary-yellow Mohawk flashed his cell, running G●●glemaps.

“Great, say no more.” Dino pulled buckled in and leaned over to whisper to his student, “Don’t worry, Kyouya, they’re staying in a different room.”

“Good; won’t have to bury anyone,” Kyouya grumbled without opening his eyes. Not that Dino could’ve known either way through the roll-up shades.

“…Guess I’ll read,” Dino murmured to himself as they turned out of the hospital lot and silence settled oppressively over the cabin.

 

Oddly enough, an hour and a half later things were still going according to plan. Kyouya had been asleep for the better part of the last hour. Ivan hadn’t needed to badger Romario to turn this way or that since about 3 turns out of the Hibari estate’s neighborhood, but then they spent a lot of that time stuck in after-lunch traffic, or filling up at the gas station. And Dino, as one of those lucky bastards who could read in the car without motion sickness punching him in the gut, pored over every available article, snapshot, and (muted) video on his junior’s so-called _Yukiotoko_ form.

The longest version of the video was admittedly striking in its comprehensiveness. The filmmaker introduced himself, and his description of he and his anonymous partner’s first encounter with _Yukiotoko_ was more or less complete, modulo some gibberish in the subtitles. This Ebisu character had captured the trail of icy footprints he followed, the fog bank he plunged into, the large white bird that fled from it, and a frozen tree that looked to be partly shattered. The automatic closed-caption-generator didn’t seem to know what to do with some of the sounds apparently issuing from the cloud before Kyouya’s silhouette became visible, much less whatever little Kyouya said when he did appear. A pair of glowing eyes with a plum hue had emerged, and in the few moments it took for the camera to adjust to the glare, blood was clearly visible from under the nose to the collar of Kyouya’s dress shirt. As he lurched closer, into view had come a third glow, slightly redder, smoldering on the web to the left of Kyouya’s neck. Nowhere in the footage was there ever a shot from the right angle to see what it was coming from, but the bloodstains surrounding it suggested another wound.

Then the image of Kyouya as the _Yukiotoko_ charged the cameraman, and Dino came a hair’s breadth from scuttling his student’s plans. The cell phone hit the ceiling and its notoriously klutzy owner juggled it twice more on the way down. By the time he had it back under control the collegiate cameraman had dropped his tool of the trade on the pavement and the rest of the footage was uninformative. But the closed-captioning software did leave one last little Easter egg behind, one that left Dino holding his mouth and nose to avoid waking his guest with laughter: the hapless videographer’s scream was mis-captioned as “[WET NURSE*!]” (*T/N: The sound the cameraman made was something like “uwah”; wet nurse is “uba”.)

Beyond the video, none of the other articles seemed to have anything else to offer, until he stumbled on an interview with the filmmaker by a local tabloid just a couple hours ago. Even then, he had only one additional detail of consequence to add to his video. He had managed to catch a glimpse of the glow on Kyouya’s shoulder and described it as a kanji character, but he couldn’t tell if it was the one for “king” or “jewel” or the number 5 or maybe “outskirts” …

_Wait._

_Five…_

_Fifth …_

_Fifth path …State of Man…_

_STA MIGNA*!_ (*T/N: Sicilian for “My cock!”, used like “What the fuck!”)

_What do I tell Kyouya DO I tell  Kyouya?_

_Merda it worked_

_Mukuro’s batshit plan might’ve actually hit pay dirt_

_And he did heal awful quick  so_

_Cazzo_

_So was I right to wait?_

_No I just ran out of time no wait  I_

_But if I tell  him he’ll know I hid it from him and then he’ll hate me and…_

_What do I do what do I do?_

_This can’t be right  it’s not fair no fair I was trying to protect him and_

_What really have I done for him after all?_

“Boss…boss!” Romario whispered as loudly as he could. Dino jolted free of his tangle of doubts and realized he’d been hyperventilating. At once he took a couple much slower, deeper breaths.

“Hahhh…My apologies. I just read something that left me feeling a bit…well…like I was having a crisis of faith, so-to-speak.” Dino reassured his subordinate just above a whisper. “Don’t let me distract you.”

“This road’s getting a little steep. You should gear down,” Ivan whispered out of the corner of his mouth.

“Roger.”

“Surprised Kyouya’s still asleep,” Dino murmured.

“How could I when you’re barking like an asphyxiating sea lion?” Kyouya growled. “I just stopped having nightmares. Let me catch up.”

“My apologies, I just read something rather upsetting… Nothing you should be concerned with at the moment,” Dino lied through his teeth, though he felt an anvil drop into his gut as he did so. He half-expected to be punched, going so far as to grit his teeth wince slightly in anticipation. But his student just nestled his head back into the corner where the seat met the door frame.

“Get it together, man…” as quietly as he sighed his last admonition, the blonde started to wonder if that was directed at him or its speaker. Kyouya shifted a little and then once again only the sounds of their breathing mingling with road noise filled the somberly silent cabin.

Five minutes passed of meandering 2-lane highway through weathered, conifer-covered mountains. Those five minutes became 10, then 15, then 20. Just when Romario and Ivan thought they were about to round the tallest mountain on their route, instead of the bend yielding to a magnificent view of the evergreen foothills, the curve plunged them into thick, almost sooty fog.

“Che cazzo…?” the one riding shotgun murmured.

“Merda,” the mustachioed one grunted, also in Italian, gripping the wheel tighter. « Nobody said anything about fog. »

« Who would? It’s the middle of the afternoon… » Ivan glanced at the side mirror and then over his shoulder. « Did we just pass some people walking the other way? »

« Don’t distract me, I’m trying not to lose the lines. »

« ...This is really fucking— »

And then they saw the hazard lights: piles of flashing twinned red lights, leering like a blinking mass of confused demons.

“PORCA TROIA!” Romario roared, yanking the wheel right, then left. Tires squealed, rubber smoked, and the 4 occupants gasped and dug their nails into the nearest fixed structure they could find holding on for dear life. The car spun and connected rear-end first with the crumpled metal morass.

The four men spent the next several seconds gasping, rubbing bruised bones and welts, and palming their bodies in wonder that they were still alive and mostly OK.

“Hah…hah…Gesu…!” Dino panted, “K-Kyouya, are you alright?”

“Augh…” Kyouya grunted, rubbing the side of his head. “Concussed, maybe…otherwise, probably yeah… Damn…”

“Boss, are you hurt?”

“Seat belt’s gonna leave a bruise, but I think I’ll manage. What the fuck happened?!”

“Boss, boss, I-I will get you a new car, just… Cazzo, that pileup came out of nowhere!”

“Romario, you can let go of the wheel, now,” Ivan tapped his senior’s arm. Romario would’ve thrown it had it not been attached to the steering column.

“Por—caz—Ges—figlio di puttana!” Dino’s older subordinate brought the outside of his fist down hard on the dash.

“Head hurts, shut up…” Kyouya mumbled tiredly.

“Agh, merda,” Ivan cursed, “must’ve slammed my phone down. It’s busted.”

Dino looked out the rear windshield, then the side and front windows, trying to get his bearings, “…Can’t see shit… Why is there this huge pileup? The road was practically dead a few kilometers ago!”

“Still is… I don’t see anybody in the cars in front of us. Merda, that’s creepy.”

“Boss, I think we need to move the car before somebody else pulls the same stunt we just did and blocks us in,” Romario announced over his shoulder.

“Will the car even start?”

“Don’t see why not, the boot took most of the impact.”

“I think the better question would be, can we pull free or are we welded to the wreckage?”

“I’ll get out and take a look,” Dino pulled up on the lock and popped the door latch, “Somebody’s gonna have to spot me, though.”

“Can’t see too far for all the fog, but I’ll keep my eyes peeled,” Ivan offered.

“Thanks, I’ll stay close. Romario, go ahead and start the car if you can,” Dino requested with one foot out the door.

As soon as the young don closed the door behind him, the air swept inside punched Kyouya in the nose. For several seconds he choked and gagged on a terribly familiar pungent fetor. “OEGHH…urgh… Oh fuck…!”

“Whasamatter, kid?” Ivan asked over his shoulder, utterly unaffected.

The AWOL prefect coughed, “You don’t smell that?!”

“Say what?” The Italians in the front strained to hear him between his choking and their boss’s calls of “Hello!” and “Anybody out there?” outside.

“The smell! It’s like month-old hospital dumpster!”

“What, did boss rip one on his way out?” the man with the Mohawk chuckled at his own suggestion.

“…No way in hell…” Kyouya scrubbed his eyes and nose, took a two deep breaths, then held his third inhalation and threw open the door. Romario watched his side mirror, mystified, as the student grabbed his boss by the arm and hauled him back inside. The boy even went so far as to crawl over his mentor’s lap (and his protests) to slam the door shut.

“Wait a—What the—OW—Kyouya, what is wrong with you?!” Dino squirmed and shuffled off his student, who by now was looking positively green.

“Bag…plastic bag…” he held his mouth with one hand and presented the other palm open in urgency. “Think I’m gonna hurl…”

“Just open the door—!”

“Are you fucked? It’s like—it’s like evaporated roadkill out there! SHIT…” he gulped and grimaced, blinking hard enough to squeeze moisture from his eyes. Dino only just began to take note of his pupil’s outbreak of sweat and ragged breathing. “OK…I’m OK, just get us the hell out of this fog. It reeks of death.”

“Now wait, I heard screaming out there! I need to check if that person’s OK!”

“What screaming?” Kyouya incredulously scrunched half of his face.

“It came from-...” Dino stopped, traced the direction his hand pointed, and frowned, now every bit as perplexed as he was alarmed. “…Wait…that doesn’t make any sense…”

Kyouya silenced his mentor with a finger to his lips, then raised his voice at the older men up front. “Drive. NOW.”

“Uh, boss?”

“Actually, yeah, go ahead and step on it,” Dino waved them on distractedly and turned back to his protégé as the car lurched forward. “You didn’t hear any screaming?”

“I don’t know; I was focused on trying not to vomit. You didn’t smell a thing?”

“Not a damn thing. Wait, what if… No, I guess if it were the concussion you wouldn’t only smell it coming from outside…” Dino folded his arms, confounded. “The fact that only you smell it worries me more than anything. Well, anything except that I’d have followed those blood-curdling screams off the side of the mountain if you hadn’t hauled me back into the car.”

“Good, one debt repaid…” Kyouya sniffed grimly. “The only question is whether this is Mukuro’s doing or his enemy’s… If it’s Mukuro… Fuck, I feel sick thinking about it…”

“Shouldn’t we call for an ambulance? Or cops?” Romario asked gravely.

“I…I dunno…” Dino vigorously scratched his disheveled blonde mop. “I saw an ambulance about 4 cars up in the wreckage, doors wide open and nobody home. I didn’t see anyone else out there, and didn’t hear anyone except someone who’d have had to be floating out over the valley.”

“Ah! The sun’s back! Woo-hoo, we’re in the clear!” the mafiosos cheered as once again the emerald to cerulean ridges of pine and cedar-blanketed mountains unfolded for miles before them.

Kyouya, however, was more transfixed by the gloom retreating in the rear windshield. “Oy… If you guys find a pull-off somewhere on the next mountain… I need a better look at this…”

“Just saw a sign for one in half a kilometer,” Ivan advised.

“Take it,” Dino nodded. About 3 minutes later they were in the gravel patch.

Kyouya cautiously opened the door and took a couple whiffs. Satisfied that the air was clear, he emerged and turned to face the malodorous cloud. Only from this distance it was clearly not a cloud. Cold sweat returned to his skin with a shudder. The mists had pulled an eldritch horror from his nightmares of late and gave it shape in this world on a truly dumbfounding scale.

A slow-moving whirlwind of decaying flesh stretched from the side of the mountain to the undersides of the stratocumulus clouds filling the sky. The misshapen bodies of giants, for whom the greatest of dinosaurs would have been but ants to be crushed underfoot, excruciatingly twisted around each other to form a cyclopean spiral column. Their sallow skin seemed at once to be organic yet made of some sort of tawny ash clouds, and their gnarled, emaciated bodies were less humanoid than the roots of a mandrake. Just as the driftwood-shaped teeth of one lurid face rotated out of view, the empty eye sockets of the next rotated to the front. No, the eye sockets weren’t quite empty. It was worse than that: the gaping, uneven pair of holes held at their very backs tiny, shriveled, yellow-white raisins focused on nothing yet following everything with their faint, ghostly glow. Squeezed up under one imploded eye or wedged between the two, each giant had a cut-off, or perhaps rotted-off, nose. Beneath their skeletal noses hung impossibly stretched and contorted sets of jaws overflowing with haphazardly-angled teeth that looked to have grown in upside-down, anchored to slack purple gums for some and jutting directly from the lips in others. The lone observer could not escape the impression that if the tower could utter sound from its many gaping maws, their howls of anguish would scour the land bare of all life. Innumerable severed arms, skin jaundiced and clawing nails black with decay, were plaited into a rope that encircled the pillar and stretched out to either side at about a 90-degree angle. Kyouya’s eyes slowly followed one end of the rope, then the other, into the distance. They tapered off into nearly invisible threads long before they reached their ends, but they nonetheless pointed to their terminals. Two more of the titanic towers loomed in silhouette over the mountaintops, their disembodied candlelight eyes the only thing marking them as more sinister things than tornadoes. Sure enough, when he looked over his shoulder, a 4th vortex peaked over the horizon from somewhere out to sea, identifiable only by the tiny pairs of stars suspended in the columnar shadow. The 4 pillars and their connective cords had Namimori cordoned off.

Never had the prefect felt so insignificant, nor so hopelessly ignorant. Whosoever commanded such a titanic abomination could be no less than a god, and no friend of humanity or indeed anything good and beautiful in the world. If it were Mukuro…

“…You lot…see nothing but fog?” Kyouya queried softly of the footsteps approaching from behind.

“Just low-lying clouds,” Dino replied. “What do you see?”

“…” Kyouya's lower jaw twitched up and down but no sound came out. Part of him wanted to laugh at the absurdity—such a great and terrible terrarium for a single ant! What astronomical malice for a mote of dust! For what lone grain of rice must Hell offer up its most titanic cauldron and all of its fire to boil? His legs buckled and he stumbled backward onto his seat. For what it was worth, the jolt seemed to unlock his voice-box. Raggedly he breathed, “…B-…bad dreams didn’t stop… They escaped…” and then, softly, he started to chuckle.

Dino crouched down before his muttering student, grasped his shoulders, and gave him a couple firm shakes. “Kyouya! Get a hold of yourself!” The teen flinched and met his tutor's eyes, panting. “Whatever it is, we’re out of it. Alright? We'll find another way out of town, OK?”

Kyouya shook his head and countered with a wavering voice, “No…no, we're in it. That,” he unsteadily pointed over his senior's shoulder, following his fingers with a thousand-yard stare, “that’s a gatekeeper.”

Dino glanced around, bit his lip, and straightened his legs. “…Can you stand?”

The delinquent waved off the hand offered to help him up, but quickly realized he was still trembling violently. He ended up catching his Dino’s lapels in a death grip, staring at the broad, red-clothed chest between them yet processing none of it. “Damn it…!” he hissed under his breath.

Dino mouthed to his subordinates, “Turn around,” twirling his finger for clarity. As his understudy’s quivering settled, he started to ruffle his shaggy jet mane, but felt the teenager bristle beneath his fingers. Immediately he pocketed his hands to prevent further unwanted wandering. While he waited for the shuddering breaths into his shirt to subside, he trained his senses on the the menacing fog that had stymied their exodus. Had it crept closer since they stopped, or were his eyes tired to the point of daydreams? Did the wind truly carry wails of the dying, thinned by miles of apathetic trees and mist, or did he simply regret not investigating the distant shrieks at the crash site despite their seemingly nonsensical source? His chivalry berated him for potentially abandoning suffering citizens, but neither could he abandon the one clinging to his jacket, not in this state. “Uh, Kyouya…should we maybe go back to the hotel for now?”

Kyouya self-consciously shoved the lapels into Dino’s chest and backed off, rubbing where the seat belt had dug into his collarbone during their spin-out. His unoccupied hand gestured to Dino for another moment to spare. As soon as Dino nodded and waved his two men back into the car, the boy dug out his phone. Squinting so as not to look at the monolithic monstrosity too closely, he aligned the cross-hairs over the vortex and clicked. Finally he turned around, closed his eyes and swiped back to review the shot. But when he opened his eyes, the scene on his phone showed nothing but a forested mountainside shrouded in fog. “Shit,” he spat. The one and only time he actually wanted to see the hideous maelstrom of giant wraiths, technology had failed him. Or, perhaps it protected Dino and his men. Either way…

“Didn't take?” the blonde asked cynically.

“Of course not… Let's just go,”  Kyouya grunted, tromping back to the car.


	16. Bonfire of the Sanities

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi all,
> 
> Sorry for the unexpected hiatus - I had to step away and focus on my PhD candidacy exams. Hopefully I can work on this again a little faster now, but I can't make any guarantees. The chapters I've posted so far actually took 3 years to write and have been edited many times more than I'll be able to edit future chapters before posting, if I'm to finish before my dissertation engulfs me. I'll try to keep the quality up, but if you notice more typos and awkward or repeated phrases, that'll be why. You'll be a great help to me and other readers if you point out errors or places where things could use better phrasing in the comments or by PM.
> 
> I'm almost done with another chapter to be posted after this, but I have to go away this weekend and I'm leaving soon, so I don't have time to finish it this evening.
> 
> Cheers!

A couple hours later later in downtown Namimori, before the captive animal panic from the outskirts of town had rippled to its core, sidelong stares and giggles followed an odd student couple onto the patio of a Vietnamese noodle shop after school. One, bejeweled like the son of a yakuza boss, stubbed a cigarette into the ashtray in the middle of the table and immediately lit up another. The other half, with a head like a pink cactus, shuffled off some of the balloons clinging to her uniform and made a sort of inflatable nest in her seat.

“OK, so…what do you usually eat here?” asked the smoker.

“The street noodles,” answered the balloon girl. Her boyfriend blinked and motioned for her to continue. “Just the street noodles.”

“…That-…That’s it? No snake-wine sauce, no…I dunno, fried spider?”

“Nope, it’s good as it comes.”

“You pick the weirdest things to be mundane about, Shittopi-chan.”

“…Oh, but you might not know, this place serves everything with a side of shelled and fried balut.”

“There it is,” her date snickered to himself.

Rather suddenly, Shittopi-chan wrinkled her nose and gave her head a quick pat-down. Then she hopped up, scurried around behind her beau, and started bobbing and fussing around his head.

“What **are** you doing?” the Vongola’s storm guardian queried perplexedly.

“I smell burning hair.”

“You sure that’s not the grill?”

“Yup. Used to pluck my hair and hold strands over a candle flame. Kinda stank, but it was like watching a time-lapse of ferns growing in reverse. But yeah, I know that smell anywhere.”

Gokudera lofted his nose and shortly inhaled several times. His eyes narrowed, then squinted, then clamped shut, trying to pick out an unfamiliar scent. Alas, years of smoking had blunted his awareness of all but the strongest of fragrances. “…I don’t know what you’re smelling.”

“Hmm, so nostalgic…” Shittopi took another few inquisitive whiffs herself. This time her eyes grew large and her mouth grew small. She scuttled back to her seat, shimmied back into her coat of balloons, and clapped her hands. “Right-o. Let’s go somewhere else!”

“Huh—? But you picked this place yourself!”

“Now I smell burning flesh.”

“Woman, you were about to eat refried duck fetus.” Gokudera put one hand on his hip and the set other forearm roughly on the table.

“Nope-nope-nope,” Shittopi shook her head and continued ominously, “ovens that make this smell do not make food.”

“…I hope you mean a kiln.”

Shittopi shielded her eyes from the reflection of the setting sun in a nearby shop's panoramic windows, and squinted down a southeasterly street, speculating, “Hmmm, I guess they did fire up the crematorium.”

“Girl, you’re scaring me,” Gokudera elevated his voice and clambered to his feet in alarm. “There’s no crematorium in the middle of—…” he trailed off as his eyes wandered down the length of her pointing arm, eventually settling on a slowly climbing pillar of dingy umber smoke. Mouths all around the restaurant joined his in hanging half-open with muddled dismay. In Gokudera’s case, though, that was merely the pause before his intracranial cogs locked their teeth and went to work. The moment they clicked, his mouth snapped shut and he tugged his girlfriend’s sleeve. “Shittopi-chan?”

“Eh?”

“How do you feel about running toward the smell of burning flesh instead of away from it?”

“Well, if that smoke’s not supposed to be there…I could go either way.”

“Good, because unless I’m really turned around, Yamamoto’s family restaurant is somewhere over there. I don’t wanna be paranoid or anything, but, you know…if _Juudaime’s_ there and I’m not, I’ll never forgive myself.”

“I know,” Shittopi flashing an understanding smile and tousled his hair, “It’s just what any snugglius maximus would do.”

Her boyfriend absently concurred, already inching in the direction of the conflagration, “Lets, uh, yeah, let’s go with that.”

Thirteen minutes from the scene: the odd couple bobbed on the balls of the feet at the next crosswalk. Gokudera oscillated chaotically among myriad modes of fidgeting. One second he’d be tugging at his garish belt buckle. Three seconds later his fingernails would score the back of his neck. After that he might laugh self-derisively through his nose, or click his tongue and snarl. Maybe he’d flick his Zippo lighter a few times, then jam it back in his pocket and set his nails upon the flesh under his bleached mane again. Shuffle in multitude and remix with varying scornful reflections upon his own sanity and competence.

_I’m gonna get there ’ll gonna be a fire ‘n a dumpster a block away Look like that time busted into Juudaime’s room with a shit-ton of roses haha ‘ll so dumb gonna look laugh at this tomorrow_

Nine minutes from the scene: another red-lit crosswalk snagged the pair and the male half’s compulsive, irritable twiddling resumed with heightened vigor. The smoke coiling into the sky grew thicker, its serpentine menace quickening over the rooftops.

_Shit that’s a hella lotta smoke there a car bomb?_

_Better not be there baseball idiot if I find you standing outside shit-eating  airhead grin I’ll kick your ass but not if Juudaime’s there_

_Pray Juudaime’s there or no, no, actually neither one o’ you please don’t be_

_ I hope fire and rescue is I don’t wanna play hero _

Human-shaped diodes give them the go-ahead at 7 minutes to the pyre, whatever its kindling might be. Gokudera snatched Shittopi’s hand and plunged into the after-work crowd, darting between the cavalcades of salary-men like a shark through herring, with a very rubbery remora in tow. Shittopi-chan, thanks to her balloon adornments, found herself becoming something of a pinball until she flung them off and shoved them into the arms of her latest and most quarrelsome human springboard.

At 5 minutes from the site of the blaze, they rounded a corner onto a street much more familiar to Gokudera. He could almost feel his esophagus tie itself in a knot.

“OK, I know where we are now…” He paused to check the progress of the still darkening, ever dancing smoke. “Oh, not good, not good…” By his lead, their brisk walk sped to a jog.

_Hate myself for thinking this but please be any other restaurant on the block I don’t wanna_

_Tell me Juudaime stayed for tutoring or even Yamamoto tell me baseball dork stayed for practice shit I don’t think he did_

_Please be anybody else or better be somebody’s car a gas leak something dammit_

Three minutes from the scene and the location wasn’t getting any less ominous. Sirens wailed in the distance, giving the cinereous vortex of ash the feel of a banshee. The lump in Gokudera’s throat dropped into the pit of stomach, catapulting a chill up his spine.

Shittopi could feel the shudder reverberate between their sweaty palms. She panted, “Hayato? …If you think…you need to run…go. I’ll catch up…”

“Sorry for dragging you into…ngh,” Gokudera couldn’t wait any longer; he broke into a sprint. Two and a half minutes from knowing what fueled the fire was close enough to see the dull red cast upon the evil looking miasma blotting out the rise of the gibbous moon. This fire was big: by the size of the ash cloud and his proximity to the Yamamoto family shop and flat, if his best-buddy-after-Juudaime’s livelihood wasn’t ablaze, it very shortly would be. The frantic teen never knew one city block ringed with clogged traffic could feel so long.

_Aaargh shit God I’m sorry I wished it on anybody else now can everybody I care about please be OK? Please be OK please be OK please be Oh shit oh shit oh shit shit shit_

_Mukuro or Vespa-shithead if I find either you evidence of Imma fucking murder you don’t dare fucking mess with mi famiglia who the hell you think you are_

With 15 seconds to go he could see the banshee’s sooty feet clinging to red ribbons bursting from the side windows of the corner complex. Yamamoto’s family shop was in the ground floor, his home on the second. Cars and buses were being rerouted, and now between the remaining vehicles—alarmingly including 2 ambulances—he saw rubberneckers crowded on the sidewalk opposite the conflagration. As firefighters moved the posts spanned by danger tape further from the embers, more onlookers spilled into the street. The cursing in Gokudera’s head now blew past his lips in lieu of panting.

“No…God…No… **Shit** …FUCK…FUCK – FUCK – **FUUUUUUCCCKKKK** – !!” He tripped over a cone rounding the corner, but it only spared him the sight of his gravest fear for a few more seconds.

Not only was the Yamamoto sushi shop a roaring inferno, the thoroughly-charred and crumbling façade that flickered in and out of view between the flames made it clear it had been burning for some time already. Firefighters blasted the blaze with all the hoses they had on hand, but the fire simply lapped it up. Despite the smoky air Gokudera could still detect the odd whiff of natural gas. A number of increasingly desperate and weary firemen milled about the flame-vomiting entrance, some donning gear, some doffing it, and a few holding oxygen masks to their faces to recuperate. Presently no more of them dared to brave the door to hell, coming or going.

Hanging on one last hope he scanned the curbside crowd and started hollering, “YAMAMOTO! OY! YAMAMOTO, ARE YOU OUT HERE?!” but the noise would have drowned most any response from beyond the front row. Front row informants it’d be, then. He scrambled up and down the picket line breathlessly hollering, “Oy, has anybody here seen the owner of that shop and his son? Anyone?! Please!” He got an immediate flurry of responses, most unhelpful.

“Who?”

“Sorry, kid, no.”

“Dunno, buddy.”

“We just evacuated from the upstairs complex.”

“Have you tried asking the firefighters?”

“’Ey, ‘ey, kid! With the Yankee hair!” One heavy-set older gentleman with a tweed flat cap and faux bamboo cane called out from the south periphery of the gathering in a thick rural accent.

Gokudera darted over excitably, “You’ve seen ‘em?”

“Ah was in there ‘afore it started. Somethin’ weird come through the door, some wobbly kid-shaped thing that jest didn’t look right.” Gokudera blanched. “Owner’s son walloped ‘im over the ‘ead with a pan. Shooed the rest of us outside ‘n told us to call the police.”

“And-and? Did they come out?!”

“Ain’t seen a one come out the front since that weren’t a fireman, ‘n even they ain’t coming out like they should.” Every word pricked Gokudera’s spine like icicles down the back of his shirt. His breathing grew ragged from panic. “Ah seen fires like this ‘afore. You best jest stay back and pray. Whole place’ll come down any time now. Tha’s why they’s pullin’ their men out—”

“NONONO-THEY CAN’T!” the storm guardian bolted back toward the firefighters, nearly knocking over Shittopi-chan in the process.

“Hayato!” She tore off her jacket and held it over her nose and mouth, continuing, “I know what you’re thinking and—!”

“ **Woman, you have no idea!** ” Gokudera cut her off, kicking over another traffic cone wound with warning tape. Most of the firefighters in any shape to do so did their best to corner the tempestuous youth against their truck.

“Sir—sir! Get back behind the tape! This whole building could collapse any minute!” the apparent captain ordered.

Gokudera grabbed the man’s collar and barked, “Who’s still inside?! TELL ME!”

“Three of our men, the restaurant owner, and his son are still unaccounted for, but don’t even think of going in there!”

“LIKE FUCK I’M LEAVING MY FRIEND!” Gokudera grabbed the nearest water bottle and dumped in over his head, right before two of the firemen grabbed him, one by the waist and the other by the arm. “JUUDAIME WOULD NEVER FORGIVE ME!”

“ **Kid, we’re telling you it’s suicide!** ” one of the sootier men restraining the boy sputtered, almost equally distraught. “We just loaded one of our guys into an ambulance with a finger-deep gash from shoulder to hip! There’s at least one maniac in there swinging way too many bladed weapons! You can’t see for shit, the building’s falling down around us—you need to cool it! Leave it to the guys still in there!”

“Hayato! Please, back off! I smell people burning already!” Shittopi shrieked, to little avail.

“URI!” Gokudera roared. His jaguar familiar exploded from his buckle amulet, freeing Gokudera. He made a mad dash for the fire-breathing door, whereupon a fireman hurled himself from the jaws of the inferno and collided with the hysterical teen. They and Uri landed in a heap just a meter or so outside what remained of the entryway, still plenty close for the student on the bottom to feel his skin start to sting from the ambient heat alone.

“M-m…-monster!” the escaped pubic servant choked out. “Cutting support beams… Eyes glowing… bloody…fucking craz—what the fuck is this…giant cat—?!”

“Get off, **get off!** ” Gokudera wailed and thrashed while his familiar tried to drag him out. “Every second I’m still out here, he’s still—he’s gonna die—HE’S GONNA FUCKING DIE!” As if to punctuate his point, a tremendous crack, like thunder, rent the air just inside the complex’s foyer and spat a shower of embers out of the door. “FUCK! MOTHERFUCKING FUCK! **Fuh** -huh-huhckkk…!” By now, tears of frustration and anguish poured down his face. “Uri…return…!” There was no escaping it now: the building’s crucial supports were crumbling, the people outside could feel the hair on their skin singeing from the eye-watering heat, and still no one among the unaccounted-for emerged. He figured his Systema CAI could keep him alive for a minute or two in the oven, but to what end? Anyone left in such hell for that long must be beyond all aid by now. He clambered to his knees, but that was as close to upright as he could drag himself. “No…no, no, god, somebody…help him—!”

But as the embers lofted from the front door settled, Gokudera saw a curious streak of blue light, like a meteorite. Then another. Then a few more. As the arcs of blue light multiplied into something of a messy helix, a pair of fainter, steadier blue glows emerged. And as they drew closer, a third steady light came into view, darker than the others and about a hand’s width below the brighter pair, offset bit rightward. When the whirling flurry of blue lights reached the threshold, they knocked deep slivers out of the door frame, sending off showers of embers for a few moments, until their fury breached the smoke. Gokudera got up on one knee in anticipation. In seconds the smoke parted around the swarm of tiny but lightning-fast, radiant blue…birds: swifts or maybe swallows, five of them. And all of them orbited none other than a very bloodied…

“Ya…Yamamoto?!” Gokudera stammered, his tears of despair drying.

But as the lacerated survivor continue to hobble forward, laboring and muttering incoherently under the weight of what appeared to be 2 badly burned bodies, his avian entourage clipped Gokudera’s shin. The gash, easily a centimeter deep, drew a new tear of pain. Gokudera leaped back clutching his leg. From his less intimate vantage point, he could now see a whole lot more wrong with his friend than the scorched human body on one shoulder and the similarly haggard cloth one on the other. His body was thoroughly riddled with blood-seeping slash wounds. Even as he watched, Gokudera noticed one of the birds pass too close to his ear. The new slit in the cartilage immediately oozed a garnet cabochon and briefly resembled a fancy earring before the blood began to run. His eyes, glassy and frozen in their sockets, smoldered with a cerulean glow. A particularly nasty gash on the right side of his chin also glowed faintly, in a similar sputtering blue hue to the wavering foxfire behind his vacant stare. On second glance, the glow pattern in said chin wound bore a suspicious resemblance to a kanji character, but its correct reading eluded Gokudera as the wound sparked, and as the head it so graced swiveled and jerked about like that of a wary songbird. And all the while, Yamamoto continued to mumble the same handful of uncharacteristically fatalistic words over and over and over…

“Gotta save…killed…won’t let…better die…save…dad…killed…doll…take you…doll…I killed…can’t let…doll…won’t let…he killed…die…better to…dad…take you…gotta save…”

While the firefighters busied themselves trying to figure out how to prod him to keep moving away from the fire without getting slashed to ribbons by the projectile swallows— “Move it, move it! You guys need to back away!” —the first sound to jolt Gokudera from his curiously horrified trance was the sound of his girlfriend vomiting.

“Ugh…it’s evil, that… The smell is just…” She rudely stabbed the air with her finger in Yamamoto’s general direction. One by one, his swallow-tailed defenders slowed and merged. One nicked his elbow and left yet another slowly oozing slit.

“What is it? What’s evil?”

“Him! Or the things he’s carrying, I dunno—!” Shittopi stopped to wretch again. “Buh…But that’s the smell I smelled way back at the restaurant. It’s coming from him!”

“That’s…” Gokudera climbed to his feet. “That’s not possible…”

“ **Will you 3 move?!** The building’s coming down!” the head firefighter yelled, spraying Yamamoto’s backside with a fire extinguisher in a bid to propel him forward. And indeed, he did stumble forward, forcing his best friend and girlfriend back to avoid the single remaining swallow made of neon blue sparks still whizzing around. Instead of them, the ethereal bird struck the cloth doll. The doll’s head was hanging by the barest rag, and it so happened the keen edge of the passerine’s wing cut it close enough to finish the job. The doll’s head landed with a soft thud on Yamamoto’s foot.

Shittopi-chan uttered a choking noise and promptly keeled over into Gokudera’s side. He caught her, but the moment he looked back at his male cohort, Yamamoto’s head had abruptly stopped its birdlike twitching and his glowing, glassy eyes now bulged, ready and waiting to lock onto Gokudera’s equally wide emeralds as soon as he turned around. Their breaths caught. The kanji glowing on Yamamoto’s chin winked out and his swallow familiar vanished in a tongue of blue flame. His legs gave. And finally, he split his best friend’s ears with a sublimely bloodcurdling scream.


	17. Talk to Me

“—op story tonight, first respondents are totally overwhelmed by reports of accidents, disappearances, and strange sightings from all routes in or out of town,” announced the local newscaster. It was about 9:00 PM, a typical time for half a dozen stations to spend half an hour speculating on the probably nonexistent deep symbolic meanings of local, regional, or global happenings. The awkward pair sitting listlessly at opposite ends of the suite’s living room couch settled on the local station after finding the national broadcast channels full of distortion and static. Nobody in the room was especially keen to hear what other havoc the forces that had stymied their flight had wrought elsewhere—really they’d have preferred almost anything else to take their minds off the situation. Nonetheless, they forced themselves to watch, if only to gauge the depth of their quagmire. “By far the most severe of this wave of disasters: At 17:13 this afternoon, the Tokaido Shinkansen, carrying an estimated 800 passengers, derailed at Toyohashi, largely destroying the station. Firefighters are struggling to combat the widespread electrical fires while digging through the passenger compartments in search of survivors. Only passengers from the last 2 cars have been accounted for so far. Rescue operations are expected to take several days and the death toll is feared to be well into the hundreds. Out to sea, several fishing boats, and the coast guard vessels sent to their aid, have been reported stalled or taking on water. Two rescue helicopters sent to lift the crew of the SS Izon trapper were turned back by sudden downdrafts and radar failure. Coast guard officers have struggled to maintain communications with the distressed ships, reporting that their crews were dropping out of radio contact one by one. Meanwhile, on the Tomei Expressway…”

“Well, we all know what happened there,” Dino muttered, tossing the remote and catching it. “But _merda_ …I’m glad we picked the road over rail… _Cazzo_ … You should probably… Well, maybe give me the numbers of some of the rest of Tsuna’s group so I can call around and make sure nobody we know was involved.”

 “…Nn…” Kyouya grunted, staring at the TV with a sour face and absently messaging his abdomen under the ribs a touch left of center. The blonde don noticed out of the corner of his eye.

“There’re still plenty of leftovers in the fridge if you’re hungry now. Of course, you destroyed the table so you’ll have to eat at the bar.”

“Ngh,” the plainclothes prefect shook his head, almost wincing. His legs twitched restlessly, eventually bringing him to his feet. “I’m going to lay down.”

“Want me to make the sofa bed?”

“Why? There’s a perfectly good bed in here,” Kyouya opened the door to the bedroom.

“As long as you’re OK sharing,” Dino shrugged, “But you’re not kicking me out after breaking half the furniture and forcing me to use my whip inside. I’m paying for it; you know?”

“Fine, I don’t care.” Kyouya snapped and slammed the door to the bedroom.

“Don’t you dare lock it!” Dino called after him. Immediately he heard a click. Dino sighed hard. “I can pick a lock in under a minute, you know.”

“That’s long enough.”

“AND I CAN KICK IT OPEN IN 3 SECONDS!”

“I’M GOING TO THE DAMN TOILET!”

Dino sighed even harder. He started to approach the door, but changed his mind and walked over to the wood pile that used to be the dinner table. Wedged in the middle of the shrapnel was the sketch Kyouya had drawn of the tower of twisted rotted colossi, the very reason he lashed out to begin with. Dino gingerly slid it out and looked it over once more. “Gesu… Why would these things exist?” The teen was almost as good at creating as he was at destroying—it was too well-rendered for his own good, and a bit too realistic for Dino’s comfort, too.

In the other room, Kyouya had just taken his place on the throne when his cell sounded from his pocket. He nearly silenced it, but the number, and the name attached to it, gave him pause. On the last chorus before it went to voicemail, he picked up.

“What do **you** want?” he growled.

“S-sorry, Hibari-san, it’s Sawada. I’m borrowing Gokudera’s phone.” Tsuna stammered on the other end, though from his tone of voice it wasn’t necessarily out of fear of Hibari.

“Question stands.”

“If you’re still at Mukuro’s place...” Tsuna’s voice dropped an octave, and it trembled with a rare, simmering fury, “...tell him he needs to get in touch with me and start sharing everything he has on the doll guy, 'cause...we're in.”

“Well, I left, so you’ll have to do it yourself.”

“Dammit…”

“Bye, then.”

Hibari’s thumb made for the end-call button, but Tsuna howled in protest, “WAIT!”

“I’m dealing with enough shit right now, thanks.”

“Yamamoto’s in the hospital, his house burned down, and his dad is dead!” Tsuna yelled into the microphone as quickly as possible.

For a moment Hibari’s brain stumbled over the rapid onslaught of news. “…Didn’t he try to kill himself on—Never mind. (As long as nobody bit it on campus.) I take it you guys think V…Vepa…citti did it?”

“Hang on a sec,” Tsuna pulled the phone away, allowing a familiarly unpolished but fervent voice to emerge from the background. “I’m putting Gokudera-kun on since he was there.”

A few seconds of static later, the background voice came to the fore. “Yo. So yeah, we can’t get to Yamamoto to ask what the hell happened, but I saw him come out of that fire carrying 2 bodies. One was a doll, but it was too burnt to see who it was supposed to be of. The other, though, he was slashed to hell but…that was definitely Yamamoto’s dad. The only thing I could get out of Yamamoto before they loaded him into the ambulance was him screaming bloody murder that he killed him.”

“…I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with this information.”

“Share anything else you got out of Mukuro about his enemy? Maybe rally the troops and prepare for war? Just little obvious things."

Hibari clicked his tongue in exasperation. “My underlings are glorified gofers. They are gnats compared to me, and at this point I have to wonder if we’re basically gnats up against a typhoon. Listen…” Hibari swallowed his bile hard. “Namimori is walled in by four towers made of giant mutilated zombie things that smell like death. So far I’m the only one who can see them, but anyone who tries to leave the city has a quote-unquote accident when they get to them, including a train with 800+ people. If it’s Mukuro’s doing, he doesn’t need us to fight. If they’re his enemy’s servants, we’re literally up against a god.”

“You’re…shitting me.”

“I wish.”

“Ugh…Jesus…” Gokudera spent the next minute or so cursing.

“Are we done?” Hibari asked impatiently. “I’m really fucking tired.”

“N—just—wait a sec… I lost what I wanted to ask, but while I think of it, did you glean anything else off Mukuro about that Vespa guy?”

“His public face could be a fat Hawaiian sculptor with an exhibition in Nagoya, his familiars are giant spiders, the missing Namimori students are probably being hacked up and stitched together as horrible undead monstrosities, and his last hideout was a storage facility on the north side. Said storage facility has since been vacated. That’s everything I know.”

Gokudera paused. “…What was that about the Namimori students?”

“One of Mukuro’s lackeys got captured and escaped. He said most of the students he was imprisoned with were from Namimori high. Some of them had been butchered and then sewn back together as composite creatures. So it's just—you're—..." he faltered and sighed, "people have been dying for awhile now.”

“Hold on…” for a moment, all that reached the prefect’s ears were a pair of male voices squabbling over something with panic rising in their voices. Gokudera came back cussing, “Shit! SHIT! Haru-chan and Kyoko-chan haven’t been seen since the day before yesterday! Fuck, we can’t wait any longer. You said he was in Nagoya?”

“IF that artist is his public identity, maybe, but as it stands we can’t leave the city. Trust me, I-” the reluctant truant stopped short. There was no way in hell he could tell Gokudera he’d just come back from trying to skip town, least of all now. “…just saw the news. Every possible route in or out of town has been blocked by fatal accidents. Casualties are in the thousands by now.”

“God fucking dammit! What are we supposed to do? Just wait to get picked off?”

Hibari came extremely close to quipping “Welcome to my world,” but held his tongue. Instead he asked wearily, “…Did you remember your other question? If not, I’m hanging up. I’m not—I can't—...I'm not in a position to deal with this tonight.”

“Um…yeah, actually, do you know of any…ability or…situation or condition that can make your eyes glow and you move all weird and twitchy, and…make you talk like a broken record and, like, maybe even make your…flames, like…solidify and start attacking you and everything around you indiscriminately while you’re completely oblivious?”

“…” Hibari frowned and twisted up his mouth, wracking his brain. “…Who was doing this?”

“Yamamoto. When he came out of the fire, he was almost as cut up as his dad and just acting absolutely bizarre and it’s like…his familiars had multiplied and sped up to the point that they were like little bullets buzzing around slashing anything they got close to, including him.”

“I dunno what to tell you.”

“Damn…” Gokudera clicked his tongue. “I guess it wasn't you after all. Or maybe you wouldn't have remembered anyway.”

Hibari could feel the blood rush from his face to his sleeping legs. “…What? When?”

“Google ‘Yukiotoko video Namimori.’”

Click. Immediately Hibari hung up and angrily chucked the phone clear out of the bathroom. It bounced off the bed and landed with a sharp clatter on the floor. The prefect didn’t have to see it to know the screen was probably broken now, but he was done giving in a shit. In more ways than one, he hoped. Even once his legs woke up and he’d washed his hands, standing up straight proved a rather tall order while his abdomen screamed for him to fold like a lawn chair. Without really meaning to, he glanced up at his reflection in the vanity over the sink. The eyes in the mirror looked 17 going on 40, so dark and sunken were they. The only remaining youth was in the usually bad breakout along his jawline. His neck seemed strangely gaunt, too, enough to make him worry how much longer he’d last like this. And peeking out of the collar was the one bandage he left the hospital with, the one over Mukuro’s favorite scar on his left clavicle. At the hospital it seemed the blood snakes either couldn’t or wouldn’t close it up after all the times Mukuro reopened it, as if it were possibly sacred. Hibari tugged at the bandage, intending to see if his blood parasites had changed their minds, but the sting he felt assured him the status quo remained the status quo.

He dragged himself out of the bathroom, partially disrobing on the way, when a series of ticks and clicks pulled him off his path. Dino must be making good on his threat to pick the lock, Hibari guessed, so he clicked the lock and opened the door. Right on cue, Dino stumbled inside and onto his face, just shy of Kyouya’s cell phone’s landing site. By the time the blonde don had dusted himself off, his student had already burrowed into the linens on the opposite side of the bed.

“Ouch… Well, this is nice, you finally deciding to be cooperative for a change,” Dino remarked, rubbing the bridge of his nose.

“Hm,” Kyouya grunted and pulled the covers over his head.

“I heard you talking to someone. Were you on the phone?”

“None of your business. Just go back to watching TV or something.”

“Just trying to make a little conversation… I know, ridiculous as that sounds.” He shed his shirt and stretched out on the right side of the bed, flipping on the inordinately large plasma-screen TV hanging on the wall opposite the bed. Once it was on, though, he turned the volume way down.

After a couple minutes adjusting to the white noise of distant newscaster voices, Hibari heard the sound of ripping paper. “…What was that?”

“Well…” Dino began haltingly. “I guess the real reason I wanted to talk was to distract myself from what could’ve been if not for all the awful shit you’ve been through. While you were in the bathroom, the news aired a segment on a small commercial jet that crashed in Kokuyou right after takeoff from Namimori airport… Thank god it’s a tiny airport… But yeah, I was originally supposed to be on that flight. Of course, I rescheduled back when I first found out you were in the hospital, but still… In some twisted way…and at way too high a cost to you, I know, but…you saved my life.”

“…Great, we’ll call it even.” Hibari muttered.

“…Ripping up that e-ticket felt good.”

“Good for you.”

Several minutes passed with only more bad news to fill it. Eventually Dino got fed up with the televised onslaught of incidents and accidents forming a remarkably well-defined square around the city. They got the point, already—the city was a disaster area that would soon descend into primal chaos, and they’d get no sleep tonight. Well, if Dino had anything to say about it, they would get sleep tonight, thanks. Just not for awhile yet. He turned off the tube and rolled onto his side to face the blanket burrito stuffed with his student.

“Hey. You tired?”

“Fucking whacked. Probably won’t sleep for shit, though.”

“Don’t blame you… Unfortunately, I’m wide awake.”

“Go back out to the other room, then.”

“…Sorry, kid, but after an existential crisis like that, I kinda need somebody to talk to. And I feel like you could probably use a bit of talk therapy yourself.”

“That’s just your imagination making excuses.”

“Heh, maybe,” Dino snickered, “But you’re not violently kicking me out. You’re even sharing a bed with me.”

“…” Hibari was tempted to gripe that he was simply too spent to give him the boot, but even he realized that wasn’t quite true. Though he certainly was in every respect utterly drained.

“Hey.” Dino urged, “Talk to me.”

“No.” After a pause, Hibari poked the top half of his head out from under the sheets and looked over his wounded shoulder. “…What would you even have me say?”

“How about we start with…how you feel right now?”

“Like I said…exhausted.”

“And?”

“And what? I’m just burned out.”

“Well…all evening you’ve looked like you’re in pain. You don’t have to try so hard to hide it from me.”

“It's nothing new and nothing I can't handle.”

“You're not handling it, though. Wasting away in silence isn't...I mean, have you seen yourself today? I thought you were still just convalescing but you look worse now than when we left the hospital.”

Hibari flung off the covers and unleashed his burgeoning hostility. “And what, you think it'll help if I bitch and moan? Nobody likes listening to people complain when there’s nothing they can do. It’s pointless!”

“That only applies to everyday bullshit and relationship problems.”

"No, fucking hell, you don't get it! There is no ordinary doctor, or psychiatrist, or police officer who can deal with the source of my problems, and the police hate me too much to even try! They'll refer me to each other in circles til they get bored and send me home with some codeine."

"The codeine would have to be better than nothing, though, right?"

"Not with a laugh track from the PD, no."

"Well...I could hook you up with something if you just tell—"

"Oh, hell no, I'm not getting involved with underground drugs."

"Shamal's drugs are underground drugs."

"I rest my case," the prefect rolled over in a huff.

Dino's head hung. "...Walked right into that one... Alright, I'm not asking anymore, I'm begging you. Please. Can you at least give me a chance to prove to myself that there's nothing I can do?" 

“…Alright, let’s just see what comes of this,” the prefect’s tongue dripped with derision. He proclaimed with tightly-crossed arms, “I feel like shit, just absolute shit, all the time now. I lose half a night’s sleep every night to nightmares and flashbacks. My eyeballs are imploding I’m so tired. My body is a solid mass of constant throbbing pain. My stomach feels like it’s eating itself. I don’t wanna face anyone, don’t wanna do anything, don’t wanna **be** anywhere. My fight-or-flight response is worse than useless, it's tearing me apart. It’s like a wasting disease!” By now the prefect sounded on the verge of bitter tears. “And you stopped listening after the first sentence, right? I would. The rest is just details.”

“No, Kyouya, I heard every word. It’s not ‘like’ a disease, that's—I mean—I'm no psychologist, but I'm pretty sure you just read me the checklist for PTSD.” Dino shook his head, watching him with deeply troubled eyes. “You never should’ve left the hospital like that.”

“Well, I couldn’t very well stay with my image on the news, so… Like I said. Pointless.” Dino haltingly extended his large, warm hand to his suffering student’s shoulder, but the latter flinched at his touch. Guiltily he retracted his arm.

“…I’m sorry all I can personally offer to help you feel better is a hug,” he suggested, barely about a whisper. “Sure you…don’t feel even the slightest relief from venting?”

“…I don’t know…” Kyouya balled up under the covers. “I don’t wanna think anymore… Dammit, you bastard, I vented precious willpower.”

“Well, I know something that would wipe your mind,” the don started with a touch of grim humor, “But you’d never forgive me if we did it now.”

“What…sex?”

“Yep. Relax, I’m not gonna…” he trailed off watching Hibari sigh blearily, lay himself out flat, and close his eyes.

 “…Do what you want. I don’t care anymore.”

“Oh, no. No. No, you don’t mean that.” Dino shook his head vigorously.

“Don’t be shy this late in the game,” the prefect scoffed, “When I think it’s the one way I still have to fuck over Mukuro, it doesn’t sound half bad.”

“Trust me, hate sex and revenge sex make for bad memories. I don’t wanna be a bad memory. I wanna be your life partner.”

“Well, I’ll never have such a thing, so it’s cool,” Kyouya unceremoniously tossed off the comforter again and climbed onto Dino’s lap. His face was disconcertingly devoid of enthusiasm, but Dino could feel a telltale heat radiating from his body and a slight bulge in his groin. “Isn’t sex supposed to be a natural pain-reliever? You said you heard my rant. I need a painkiller. Badly.”

“Mi Dio, you have no idea how awkward this looks…” the blonde groaned, gripping the top half of his face. Nonetheless, the body is weak to years of want, and the furnace beneath his cheeks first lit by embarrassment, then stoked by lust, soon became self-sustaining.

“…Just open your fly and lemme ride til I pass out or something,” Kyouya demanded, rocking his hips into the Bucking Horse’s already swelling loins. His sudden vigor seemed to be fueled more by irritation than real desire. Dino sucked air sharply through his teeth as the heat smoldering in his core reached his ears and fogged up his self-reflection capabilities.

“…Curse the bodily appetites…” he sighed hard. “I’ll frot with you, but nothing further, and only if you promise me one thing.”

“What?”

“Tomorrow when you get home, I don’t care how, just get yourself to a doctor. Some of what you described earlier sounds like an ulcer or gastritis. That much is treatable and you **really** don’t wanna let it to get worse.”

“Ugh… fine… Alright, do we have lotion or anything?”

“If you let me up, I’ll go check the bathroom.” Kyouya swung himself off and waited patiently on his knees. His eyes wandered around in the general area of the nightstand and the door to the bedroom, but his brain didn’t really take in any of it. Only dull, smoldering tension occupied his otherwise hollow mind, and the vacuous space seemed to reverberate with the sounds of Dino fumbling around in the drawers and medicine cabinet in the bathroom. But as far as he was concerned, that was just white noise, as were Dino’s footsteps as he returned with only his shirt in hand. “Couldn’t find lotion, but we have spit. That's good enough for a hand job,” he said, taking a seat and swinging his legs up into his original position. “Here, I’ll use my mouth. Stand up facing me and lean against the wall.”

“If you’re gonna do that, I should probably sponge off.”

“I don’t care; it’s not like you’ve been sweating.”

“…Your funeral.” Dino’s protégé unzipped, straddled the don with bent knees and pulled his half-hard member through the flap of his heather-grey boxer-briefs. Dino immediately took its full length into his mouth. “Nn…” Kyouya shuddered.

Dino pulled him out and kissed the tip. “Hmm. Musky,” he remarked, suckled the tip, and then took him to the hilt again.

“I…warned you,” the prefect murmured. His hips started to sway instinctively.

Once again Dino pulled him out with a pop to add, “Didn’t say that was a bad thing.” And again he sheathed the hardening phallus in his mouth. With one hand he fondled his pupil’s family jewels and massaged his perineum. With the other he unbuckled his slacks to liberate his manhood.

"Nguh..." the prefect seemed especially pleased with the perineal palpation. He let slip a low, soft moan and sank into his mentor's hand. "...When do you wanna...?"

"Now's fine, if you're ready." Kyouya nodded, so Dino leaned back and smoothed the denim covering his thighs while his student wedged his seat between them.

"Holy shit," Kyouya mumbled, staring at his member as it compared to his mentor's. "Is that where the horse part of your nickname came from?"

"I don't think...well...actually, now that I think of the timing, that's a distinct possibility."

"Wait, are you serious?"

"I dunno, really. A lot happened in middle school. Your hands or mine?"

"Yours, they're bigger." Dino obliged and bound their erections together between his long, firm fingers. Kyouya leaned back and sighed deeply, "Ah, that's good...urgh." 

"W-what, did I squeeze too tightly?" Dino released his grip.

"No," Kyouya said through gritted teeth, bracing himself on his mentor's shoulders, "just leaned back too far. Stomach wasn't happy with it... Keep going, I'm just gonna..." The weary student ran the lengths of his arms over Dino's shoulders until his head stopped his descent. He sighed deeply. Curtains of tousled jet hair slowly parted from Kyouya's collar on up to the base of his skull. Presented with a golden, slightly glistening nape just centimeters from his rubicund lips, Dino found himself thanking god for precum. The sounds it made as his fingers worked over their members covered for him sucking back his saliva before it soiled the caramel perfection just under his nose.

"...Just a taste...?" the don mumbled to under his breath, barely audible above the uneven panting warming his chest. His head floated on the meaty, musky fragrance wafting from the bronzed nape. "...Damn..." But he shook his head and bit his lip. The fresh memory of Kyouya's listless aspect proved an exceptionally sturdy buttress for his wavering conscience. Only the prefect's hips, bucking hard against his lap, could make that fortitude sway.

"Ngh...if you're...no-anh...not about to cum, then...ngh...you better hold me back..." Kyouya grunted after some sultry minutes filled with heaving breasts and chirping bed-springs.

"Gotcha..." Dino obligingly capped his partner's manhood with his thumb, eliciting a sharp hiss. "Sorry. I'm pretty close too... See any tissues behind me?"

"No... Hurry up..."

"Just a bit... You're gonna...get it in the face...if you don't move." Kyouya's only response was to lean back and yank the hem of his shirt up to his teeth. "Alright...Here comes...nngh!" 

"Guhh...!" Dino's hands slipped. Student and mentor christened each other with a splash of nacreous fluid. The pair sat a long while panting and staring fixedly at their spent seed tracing the contours of their partners' abdominal muscles.

At last, Dino broke the post-coital ice. "So...as a pain-killer... Did it work?"

"...I regret everything..." The prefect's face remained languidly blank. He flopped on his back. "Fuck kenja* time."

"Guess that's a no... Well...can't say I didn't warn you," Dino gently admonished, using his shirt as a cum rag first on his student, then himself.

"Oh, sod off."

Dino inhaled as if to say something, but let his breath catch. When he released it, all he could say was "...Dino, don't you touch that with a 10-meter pole," to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Kenja Time: a supposed period of heightened mental clarity after the male orgasm
> 
> Author comment: boy did I miss the boat on the publication date for this one. Hope it's not too disappointing. The frot scene was supposed to be kinda awkward and unsatisfying, but I can't tell if I managed to convey that without just writing it badly. o____o;


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